Puck Soup - Keith Olbermann

Episode Date: June 30, 2016

Greg and Dave analyze the P.K. Subban, Taylor Hall and Steven Stamkos blockbusters, while attempting to explain Rogie Vachon's Hall of Fame credentials; sports broadcasting legend Keith Olbermann joins us to slam Hockey Night in Canada's changes, talk NY Rangers, spin an Eric Lindros story and explain why the NHL needs ESPN; we list our 10 most fascinating free agents; your listener mail; and a few moments on the absurdities of ID4 2 and OCEAN'S 13.

Now entering nerdist.com. Sticks and hits and goals and saves and slapshots and goons. We've got sportly commentary to whatever you commute. But we also cover movies, TV shows, it's and tunes. It's your weekly bowl of hockey and nonsense. I'm Greg Wischenshe of Yahoo Sports Puck Daddy Blog. And I am Dave Lowe's of many, many websites. And you're in Puck Soup.

Dave, I've got to tell you something right now. They'll have a B in my bonnet, a spur in my saddle. Rogi Vashan makes the Hockey Hall of Fame, sir. You know, a 31-year wait. Can't believe that he's in, you know, what's changed in 31 years for this guy who was a marginal goaltender? Makes no sense. For most of his career, a Haseki-in goaltender for a couple years in the 70s. You know, obviously played really well in the Canada Cup in 1976, won a couple cups of the Habs.

But all of a sudden, he's a Hall of Famer? I can't believe it. That's crazy. That's been a being your bonnet all day. What bothers you most about it, really? Well, I'd have to say the thing that bothers me most about the movie is. Wait, wait, hang on, hang on. There's some news, actually.

Oh, oh, please. What is it? Wait, hold on, here it is. Hmm. What? What's fine? Wait, let me make sure it's from a real Twitter account. I don't want to put any fake news out there.

Oh, you don't want to booed McKenzie or an Elliot fried man. Wow. What's that? Okay, according to, it seems to, it seems, as though the oilers have traded Taylor Hall. Oh, that's interesting. Well, they had to make room for Milan Lucich, and as we know, Taylor Hall was merely a placeholder for Milan Lucich.

Yeah, but... Where is he going, though, Dave? I mean, maybe it's a situation where the Twitter account got hacked, but it says Taylor Hall to the devils for Adam Larson. Oh. The defenseman guy. Really? We got Taylor Hall on a one-on-one train!

Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? Taylor Hall for Adam Larson? Are they idiots? Well, are they idiots? It's probably not a one-for-one trade. Hold on. Let me just look at this other piece of... Well, listen, you know... It's a one-for-one trade. Wow. I'm going to call him Taylorham from now on. Wait, maybe they retain... No? No, it's a... It's contract for contract.

Well, anyway, that's interesting. But as I was saying, the thing about Rogie of Ashon that irks me is that people are saying it's an example of West Coast bias. Like Helene Elliott said when she wrote in the L.A. Times, he probably was overlooked because he spent much of his prime in Los Angeles. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, hang, hang on interrupt. I got to interrupt. He forgets about Marcel Dion, what? Why? I'm in the middle of the real give a Sean rant. Again, we're doing this thing as like real things unfold, but it's a tweet that says there's another trade going down. Wait, let me get in this.

I think there's a lot of fake accounts at this time of year. It is a blue check mark. Look at that. Um, okay. Apparently P.K. Suban has been traded by the Montreal Canadians to, no. No. To Nashville for Shea Weber.

Wait a for. who, Rese, Weber? Wait, again, I mean, people can get hacked on Twitter. It happens on the internet.

Uh-huh. Yeah. There's, wow. Yeah, again, this is a one-for-one for one deal, huh?

And the contracts, no one's retaining salary. So, Suban for Weber. Well, well, that's the, I guess that's the

right call for Mike, the right call for Mike, Mark Borgiavan. Wow. Wow, he panged it. Yeah. Huh.

Oh, well, that's, well, that's, out of the way. You've got thoughts here. If I'm, if I'm, Curtis Joseph. Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

What's what? Holy Jesus. Not a trade. So it's not that big a deal, I guess. All right. Well, anyway, so anyways, Rogi Vashon, obviously, what? It's still important? It's kind of a mildly decent player.

It's more important than Rogi Vashon in the Hall of Fame, Rand. Yeah, you know what? Just got to do your thing. Okay. Rogi Vashon, well, now I'm curious. Now I feel like maybe I... Are you sure? Yeah, go ahead.

Because you got to, I keep cutting off. Well, that's just said, like, the entire, like, I have another 75 minutes of this and I feel like I'm not going to be able to get through it if you don't tell me what you're talking about. It's quick, but the lightning are going to resign Stephen Stamco. What?

Stamco's not going to go to free agency and he's going to come back for any of your contract. We literally had 17 straight hours of Stephen's Stamcoast coverage plan for Friday on Pock Daddy. And this has all gone down in like the last nine minutes. Or I'm

sorry, three minutes. I got to be honest with you like I was really kind of fired up about Rogi Vashon in the Hall of Fame, but now I feel like I feel like we should probably cover these other things. Wait, hang on, hang on. Oh my God. This is unbelievable. The Flames have traded Johnny Goddrow to the Sabres for Cody Franzen. This is unbelievable.

I can't believe. Wait, isn't it? No, hang on. That's actually a fake one. Okay. That's a fake tweet. But on a day like today. True or false.

It's Cody Franzen even on the Sabres right now. Do you even know, do you? Well, here's the thing. General Fanagers down. I'm not sure if he's still on the team or if it's just a situation where his rights are available, but that's the joke I'm going to go with there, Cody, Frank. Currently with the Buffalo Sabres. There you go. I'll have you know. So

anything. Listen, kids, if you're out there saying to yourself, man, I can't do this, I can't do that, it's impossible. Today proves anything is possible. In full disclosure, we're going to do a different intro and then all this should happen. We have Keith Oldham

on the show today and he's awesome. You're going to love it. And it's a lot of stuff if you're interested in the inner workings of the NHL on TV. And particularly Keith spitting hot fire about Sportsnet, you're going to love it, too. Good Lindross. Good Lindrosse. An awesome Lindraff story, too. So Keith is coming up.

And then later on, we get into more UFA stuff in preparation for this weekend. But literally, these three dominoes fell within maybe like 10 minutes of us taping the opening seven. So let's take them one at a time. First off, you heard me make a mess on the floor of Happy Juice. Taylor Hall is a devil. And I'm going to tell you right now, like, Adam Larson's a good defenseman, and I think he's going to be pretty good on the Oilers. But there are two reasons why this trade is made in my mind. And they are, what is it, 22 for Larson?

I think that's what we looked at. And then 2020 for Taylor Hall. Hall makes $6 million against the cap through 2020 when he goes to UFA. So four years of Taylor Hall in Jersey, a star player, a great player, and a player of the devils are not going to to find in their own organization as a UFA or in the draft because Corey Schneider keeps fucking it up by playing well every year. Him in his stupid pads. He has stupid pads and his stupid good goal tending.

So Taylor Hall becomes the kind of player you can market and get fans excited about. And that's going to cost you something. In this case, it cost them Adam Larson, who arguably was the second best defenseman on the team behind Andy Green, which isn't saying much, but I think he's got a lot of potential. That said, what the fuck are the oilers thinking trading to Ellerhall straight up for Adam Larson? I mean, that's one of the, like, again, everyone has, like, every trade doesn't necessarily have to be, like, equal value for equal value. Sometimes you're in a situation where you've got a glut of something and you need something else, so you trade from the glut, but you give up a little bit too much because you have that other need. but Jesus, is Adam Larson not the thing that's going to turn them from like a perennial 65, 70 point team into a playoff?

But there's not. You see, what's what we're seeing here, and we'll talk about Jacob Trubel later in the show. Offer sheet Seth Jones. But is Adam Larson? Well, but offer sheeting Seth Jones doesn't do the thing that they obviously felt they needed to do, which is clear out space for me and on Luchitz, which is as crazy as it sounds, that Taylor Hall is being traded, so you can sign Milan Luccheech. But this is what happens when you turn the keys over to Peter Shirelli.

A guy named Taylor and or Tyler will be traded, and Milan Lucchech will be on your team. That's what we should be doing right now is trying to guess what story is going to come out in the next 24 hours about guys. According to my sources, Taylor Hall, likes to stay out late on off nights and drink beer and talk to girls. It's true. You know, we had to get rid of that element from our locker room because, you know, we want to have some good, young, you know, morally, morally sound kids. Yeah, absolutely. I think he had a shirt off at a bar once.

There's always been some talk about Hall not necessarily being the best citizen, but then they let him room with McDavid this year, which makes you think that if he's like, you know. Wait, what's he ever done? There's some talk about an attitude problem. Oh. No, but again, he's been on the shittiest team in sports for like the last decade. And they're like, no, no kidding. It's going to, it's going to be a problem for him.

The grizzled miserable 24. And that's just, and part of this too, part of this two, without question, is the need, the necessity by this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, uh, this management group to start clearing out the guys that have been there and that have the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the future of losing, but, but, but, but. And you bring in, Lucich who's got, you know, Adam Larson's the high school conference championship team. Come on, man. There is no way to spin this. it's just such a bad trade it's just such a bad depends on who you're talking about obviously the pretty good draper with the NJD but like if you're a Devils fan

you're creaming your pooping your every fluid in your body's just you know involuntarily leaving it right now but I just you're saying just because we can say it on this podcast you're saying Devils fans have the cum shits right now they have the jizz poop pukes

right now all three at once But like I like the whole point of like the oilers having all this stuff was like, oh man, you know, you can't trade Taylor Hall. He's your number one. But they have all the centers. They have McDavid. They have McDavid. They have McDavid. They have R&H.

They have dry sidle. They have why not why not? I mean, if the devils are going to take Taylor Hall, I'm assuming they would take dry sidle. They would take Nugent Hopkins. Not because they're better, but just because they could use a center at this point. They have Zach are coming through. Um, sure. But like, no.

But listen, I take Taylor Hall a thousand times before I take one of the centers. And I'm sure Dryside wasn't available. They want to move Newgin Hopkins. And they probably could still move him. I remember talking to somebody from Edmonton at the draft that said that this could be the, you know, whatever happens is not going to be the only move. There's a chance that Hall and Nugent Hopkins could both move. So maybe like they trade Nugent Hopkins, but they're able to bring in Petty Purcell?

Like, oh, hey, we got a clear space. Newgeon Hopkins for like Jonas Brodine or something like that. You know it's coming. But they can't do it now. All right. Let's move on to the real news of the day. I don't even know what would be the biggest story. I mean, Hall is clearly the third biggest, but what's bigger?

P.K. or Stamco? Probably P.K. So when I was in Buffalo for the draft, I heard Mark Bergevant talk, and he refused to... Lying through his teeth, mother ever. Well, he didn't lie through his teeth. I disagree. Nobody called him on a door where he's like, if somebody calls me, I have to take the call and listen. You can hang the fucking phone up.

Well, from that aspect, he was full of shit because all you could do is just say, you know, P.K. is going to be here in perpetuity. And then you'd still get phone calls from people being like, I don't believe you. You are lying. And here's the thing. He would not say that. He would not say P.K. was going to be a Canadian next year. And I believe him when he says that he said no a lot because nobody offered him fucking

Shea Weber until the National Predators did. And like, that's a crazy trade. I think it's possible that he and you had that offer. before he stood in front of everybody and BSed his way through that press conference. Because otherwise, I don't know if anything would have come out. I think something came out because that was in the works. Something came out because Jim Benning flapped his big old gums in Vancouver and got fined for it. Dufus, that guy is.

Jesus, God. You know, yeah, I know. But, like, but it's a bad deal. Jay Weber's not as good as P.K. Sue Bennett. He makes the same amount of money and he has a longer contract. Yeah, he does. Like what? Listeners, if you're out there, I tweet, I've tweeted this twice.

if there's a thing you know about either P.K. Suban, which I think is the unlikely part of it, or like some sort of story about somebody not liking P.K. because he did something, whatever it may be, I need to know what it is because he's arguably one of the three best defensemen in the NHL, and he was just traded for an older, worse version of himself straight up. And not even a version of himself. Like, he's mobile. He's faster. He plays the kind of game that Peter Lobelet likes to play. Weber's not faster. He's not. Weber's got a hell of a shot.

He's going to be a fine defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens who clearly believe that their time is now. But here's the thing. And this is just the bottom line. Montreal wanted to trade the guy. They didn't like him. They didn't like the fact that he was bigger than the bullshit fucking crest on the front of those uniforms. And the minute you get there, you become a pariah. And so all that talk about how P.K was on the outs.

And they were looking to move PK and, you know, PK and the Canadiansans. And we're all like, this is insane. Why would they want to trade one of the best players in hockey? Simply because he cuts a video of dancing through the hallways of a children's hospital. And because maybe people thought he should be the captain instead of Mac's boring-ass Pateretti or Eddie. Like we all thought it was just horseshit that these things were coming out. But in the end, they were all true. They really didn't want it to Montreal.

Right. Like the whole thing where there was like, oh, there's unrest in the locker room. And then, like, P.K. gave Patcheretti the hug. And everyone was like, look, they hugged. And then you watch the video. And Patrick Reddy's, like, super stiff and, like, uncomfortable through the whole thing. something happened, something occurred. I want to know what it is because this is, it's more insane, I think, than Taylor Hall for Adam Larson.

I think it's a more insane trait. I really do, because I think Suban is that much better than Taylor Hall, and obviously Adam Larson's a much better defenseman than Shea Weber, right? Come on, we all know that, no. Shea Webb, listen, it's insane. This is a classic case of everybody's going to be shitting on Shea Weber. Shea Weber's still a fine defenseman. Shea Weber's still an all-star defenseman. He's still a top-minute's defenseman.

No, he's still fine. Listen, is his reputation, is he a reputation-based guy? Of course he is. He's not nearly as good as he used to be. And in fact, you can make the argument that his partners have made him exponentially bitter than he is. That said, he's fine. You don't trade P.K. Suban for a fine defenseman.

Well, you, no, but you trade him for a top pairing defenseman, which Shea Weber is. I guess the thing about Suban, like all the other scenarios that we heard vis-a-vis P.K. Suban and a potential trade-from. Nobody coming back is going to be in Shea Weber's class. You don't get a 1A for a 1A. And that's what they got here. They got a 1 for a 1 for a 1. You know?

They got a great A defenseman for a great A defenseman. I feel like by game 60 of next season, we're going to finally get to that point where we're like, oh, right, Shea Weber isn't really as great as we all thought he was. He's a good Canadian boy, though. Boy, a Canadian Olympic hero and P. And P.K. couldn't even hardly make the team. No more Roman Yosi to carry him around. I'm super duper.

Can we talk about the most exciting thing about this BK trade? the fact that the Nashville Predators are going to have that sweet yellow jersey with Suban on the back of it? The fact that he's in the United States now. P.K., welcome to America. Welcome to America, P.K., we love you. We value you. Our French-speaking media is almost nil. Yep. Nobody talking behind your back. Nope. And welcome to Nashville, sir. I cannot wait for that first picture of P.K. in a cowboy hat with a piece of hay in his mouth, lounging.

Just having like a tutsies. Yeah, a tutsies, right. Like, dude, and now, again, like, you know, Bruce Arthur, our good friend was already kind of shitting on this saying that he's going to be wasted in this market. But how are the national predators now not one of the premier interesting teams in this league? Philip Forsberg, Roman Yossi, P.K. Suban, like, this is now a team that has appeal. This is now a team. You've taken a guy in Montreal that they didn't want and hated the fact that he was above the team to a place where they've needed a guy above the team. for years. Now you have Johansen, P.K., Foresburg, Josie. I am making time to watch this team.

This team is so good, Dave Lozo, that they should be at least the fifth or sixth choice behind Chicago for an outdoor game one year. Boom. Sets himself up and knocks it out of the park. And on top of that, although every single salary cap side is down right now because of the fact that three of the most gigantic moves possible happen in 15 minutes. but I'm pretty sure the predators can still go out and get somebody on July 1st. Not that there's really something out there. They're not going to. They've already said that they weren't going to dabble in UFA, which was interesting because like, because Ocposo was available. We all thought he'd be an interesting, interesting choice there.

Yeah, they could use the top six. P.K. Suban is 27. Roman Yossi, Ellis, Ryan Ellis, and Eckholm are 25. Oh, what do they do now for the, can they hold on to four defense? protect four defensemen in the expansion draft? Oh my. Oh, my. Well, they could.

Right? Because I thought it was seven and three. Captain. The predators have too many defensemen for the expansion draft. Oh, my. Ricardo. With the first pick in the 2017, Las Vegas expansion draft, the fighting away Newton. So like P.K. Suban defensemen.

You have to remember that there is another option for the Vegas expansion draft, which is that you can protect eight skaters. Yeah, that's what it is. So you can protect a certain number of forwards and a certain number of fencedmen and your goalie or eight, nine, it's like not a total of six and three or four and four you. And so I bet you they protect eight. Oh, they have to.

They have to protect their top four. Protect the whole blue line and then like, yeah, go from there. Like Colin Wilson or somebody in white, but they're going to be so much fun. They're going to be so good. God. P.K. Suven. Let's put a bow around it before I get the Stamcoast. I can't for the life of me imagine when it's like to be a Canadians fan.

Where my entire life has lived each day in a haze of nostalgia and glory. And torches. It's like it literally is like if you're a Yankees fan and you just watch them trade Jeter. Well, no. T.K. Suban is actually really good. Oh, holy. Boom. I meant from like a popularity standpoint. point. Okay, that's fine. Now, I think, I can't imagine what it's like to be a Habs fan and feel

completely helpless as you watch this trade being made. I just, Weber's, again, I think Weber makes them a, still a good team and everything else, but PK is special, man. PK.K. is a special ass player, and you just saw him sent to Nashville. I feel like Mark Bergevin might officially be a bad general manager. Like, his first few years, I was kind of on the fence. I, I, I, I, I, don't think he's good at what he does. I still say the Hall Larson kerfuffle is the worst deal, because it means now you have Luchich, you have the anchor that is Luchich on your team. Yeah, well, just in terms of just the trades, like I feel like Adam Larson could get better.

Sure, sure. I do. Shea Weber's played his best talking. He's just, yeah, it's just, I just, oh, God, I feel bad too, because, like, clearly the organization is not a big P.K. Suban fan, but, like, Canadians fans love him. Like, this is got a, this is, I can't imagine how devastating it's going to be for some dude who like just checks his phone at 4.45 p.m. on Wednesday. Or he puts on this podcast and doesn't know what's happened.

And he's just like, wait, are these guys being serious? They traded P.K. Subat. And like, it's devastating. He's, he's the best player and he's the most fun player. And he's gone. Dude, think about the fact that there probably was somebody in the air for that 15 or 20 minutes when all of that shit just happened. And they land and it's like, P.K. Do what? Whoever do who? It's just all like in a 12 minute. It's like three retweets. finally uh stephen stamcos uh just decides to just shit all on everybody's fun for the the off season uh ends the derby before it begins uh eight year contract 8.5 against the cap all of the stories written about how the tax advantages of florida would actually put the lightning in line to maybe pull this thing off and keep them i really thought three things about

Stamco's that as of right now, because, you know, we're assuming he's staying there. Bob McKenzie says he's staying there. Eight for 68, right? Yep. Not 69. It seems like a lost opportunity there, but that's okay. It would have been a pretty nice contract. It would have been a nice one.

Three things I was wrong about on PKK. I really thought $10 million was a number he wanted to hit because Kopitar and Taves and Kane did. I thought that too. I never thought he was worth as much as them, so I'm surprised that he's actually getting what I think is a fair deal. The second thing is I really heard from people that geography. was a thing. And maybe geography is a thing

in the sense that he stays in Tampa. But I heard that he wanted to be closer to family, wanted to be up north. And that turned out not to be true. And then the third thing is, he's a center who doesn't play center anymore

on that team, although maybe he will. Maybe that's part of it. And maybe there was serious discussion with his coach and trying to smooth out things and figure out life because all you heard was he was kind of tired of playing for Cooper.

I know. But he's going to be there for eight years. John Cooper must have been like, look, you're a center. You're going to be a center. That has to be the thing. That has to be the sticking point. I don't think he liked playing wing. He wasn't as good on the wing.

He's better at center. But now, looking ahead, they're going to lose one of the triplets. They're going to lose one of the kids. There's no way they're going to be able to. He's my favorite one. He's not going to be him. So it's probably going to be a lot. Johnson's got one more year left on his deal at like a really good amount.

I don't know. Tyler Johnson's always hurt. These tiny, small... God, I'm so lost without any of the cap websites working. But it's a good deal. What kind of day has it been where Stephen Stamcoe staying in Tampa for eight years and $68 million

is just like, oh, whatever, that's cool. It's a good story, I guess. All right. Congratulations to the lightning, I guess. I mean, like, you're going to have to make a lot of other really shitty decisions. And here's the thing, too, about it. Let's be honest.

Stamp Coast and Lightning win the cup next year. Okay? How quick... I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm just saying that that... No, I think it's possible. Okay. How quickly does he go to Steve Eisenman and say,

look, I feel like we've really accomplished a lot here together. I understand I have a really favorable cap hit. And Toronto was like saying, hey, like, we don't have Stephen Stamp Coast. And we saw you had a Stephen Stamp Coast. And they told me to... Well, they didn't tell me. I heard on Twitter, because they told me to be tampering, I heard on Twitter they would like to trade for me.

So what do you think? Like, don't you think that this is not... Do you think he's going to spend all eight years in Tampa? Ooh, that's a good question. Because I don't think he will. Do you think he has a no move on this deal? Because we don't know that... Of course he does, but I mean, a no move basically means that he controls his future.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And eight years from now, within those eight years, couldn't you see a situation where a turn... Toronto gets real good and like these last piece of the puzzle guy and the lightning have their cup. So you mean like more like a like a 33 year old trade or like a 29 year old trade? Like a 32 year old trade. Like a 33 year old. No, a 33 year old trade.

I feel like he's I feel like if he's gone through all this. He basically got to the point where he could have gone anywhere for the most part that he wanted. And he said, I'm coming back. He said, I'm coming home. Tell the world that I'm coming home. Love the tax situation here. I can get really cheap beer. I'm coming home.

I'm coming home. Get the grouper. I'm coming home. Tell Hulk Hogan. Tell my friends. What do they do with Ben Bishop now? Like, I guess they're stuck with him. They have to keep it.

No, they can't just keep the band together for another year. One more year. Is the UF anyway? Yeah, that's what I mean. They can't do that thing where they're looking to save or whatever. This is it. And I'm going to say it. 2017 Stanley Cup champion

Tampa Bay Lake How are they beating the 2017 Stanley Cup champion National Predators Oh, that's gonna be a good cup final That's a great cup final And also a nice A nice cup final for

All involved Good commute Yep All right everybody Keith Olderman You know him You love them from ESPN Everywhere else he's worked

Also political stuff It's got a lot to say It's a great conversation I have another like 71 minutes on on uh oh yeah do you want to finish that no i feel like we'll get to keith and then and then keith is is as you expect keith to be and then we come back with some ufay stuff and you're listening or mail um but hopefully this is one of those that you're already on the beach and you have a good two hours to kill because it's going to be a long one uh anyway here's keith alberman uh thank you

for joining us with puck soup you are the first guest we've ever had to actually wear uh a hockey jersey i find that hard to believe this is this is this is sort of like my third go-to attire. We've only had maybe like seven or eight or nine guests. Yeah, and two of them were naked totally. I see. Because there were guys living out here on the street. Yeah, they're

nice guys, though. But you're wearing a Rangers jersey, it's making me as a Devils fan feel uneasy, but making us both feel happy. It takes the edge off to see someone wearing a hockey jersey. Well, especially from a team that has not played in such a long period of time. Last spring, 2015,

I saw all but one their home playoff games. This spring, I went once and saw all but one of their home playoff games. It's a tough year, and it's going to be a dark, with darkness is descending over the franchise. They had a good run, though. They had a good run. When you go to MS. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I come from a family of Ranger fans. I have a, I have a great uncle who was at the two Madison Square Garden games in the 1940 finals. My mother went as a kid. I have heritage. My own fandom goes back to 1968. So I've seen him win the one time. Yeah, that's

great. But I had really dark hair when that happened. That's 22 damn years ago. I'm tired of this. What was 94 for you? How did you react to it? What was it like to finally see the, and did you believe it was a curse? Was it a curse for you? Well, my theory always was it was about the circus.

And I mean, there's a practical element to the circus, two practical elements, and then the idea that the Rangers were less valued to the Madison Square Garden Corporation which created the Rangers. then was the circus, which was there every spring. And they put the nets up, and then there were two practical things. They would not re-book the circus.

So the Rangers played an excessive number of road playoff games. In the 1950 finals, I think they had one home playoff, two home playoff games. Detroit and Toronto. Didn't they play an entire Stanley Cup final ones in Montreal? No, but it's possible. I mean, Australia is also possible. But, I mean, yeah, like, they didn't have home games in the Stanley Cup finals. They were the 1940, the famous chant with Leah Hextall's grandfather scoring a hat trick.

There were two games in New York and five games in, I guess it was Toronto. I think that's what it was. And then they used Detroit as a neutral site. It was like three games in Toronto and two games in Detroit? You kidding me? So the Rangers always had that going against them. plus one of the theories was the ice was always bad in the garden because of no no in the spring because of the elephant droppings one of my first commentaries on this in

college was and all ended with and all you can do is go get a shovel and that's the way we felt and then there was this you know sort of meta thing which is this is not as important as the damn circus so so yes I think it was there are some practicalities dude you had to play all your Stanley Cup final games on the road you're not going to they got to games in 1950 with a terrible team and lost. See, I've been waiting for that in the modern era. I've been waiting for the Rangers to make the playoffs one year and then they're like, oh shit,

we have Billy Joel booked for April. Yeah. Like, what do we do now? We'll just play all our games. That's not, that's not tired, is it? Billy Joel thing? No, I don't get it. Oh, like, is it a thing? Is it now, is it like... Six good, songs. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. He's

probably right, but... Six, okay, I won't change the station, for those of you who still remember, stations, songs. And the rest of it is just, this is another song about me. Oh, come on Saturday night. I was so great. And it's like, you're bordering on Donald Trump, fellow.

No, it's so tired. You write what you know. You write what you know, and he knew about it's as tired as Glenn Sather's reputation. Okay, well, what's he supposed to write about if not himself? Jewel writes about herself and beautiful songs. But the way is, he hasn't written a new song since the last Ranger Stanley Cup championship. Well, no, that's what he did have,

He's just a house band. That's all it is. We didn't start the fire. It's just another sign of Jimmy Dolan's screwing something else up. He's got three franchises in there. None of them have won anything in decades, and none of them are going to win anything in decades.

That's why we didn't start the fire was so genius, because it was just a list of things that had happened since he wrote his last good sign. Yes, agreed. And the only one that really wasn't about him. Do you, are you a Rangers fan that would be okay if they went into like a five or six period of year period of rebuilding. Because that's always been the argument against them doing what other teams have done,

which is to tank it big is that in New York you can't tank. There's an expectation we've got season ticket holders and all wearing suits. You know, there's always been the expectation that they can't tank. Do you care if they tanked? Yeah, well, first off, I think it's an academic question. They're going to tank. Let's see. Worst farm system, no draft choices.

Everybody's over the age of 45. And unless they can talk Martin Saint-Louis out of retirement, there's nobody to work the third line. Yeah, I think we're going to have a period of darkness, as I said. And they've had them before. And guess what? The fans still go. Because this is not Hartford.

No. This is not Hartford. And it's also not, with no offense to some of the smaller Canadian cities, it's not those places. It's not even Vancouver where people are going, I'm not going to the Canucks. They're not going to win. It's none of that.

As you know, New York sports fans are designed to participate. If we will go to abuse fans, Abuse a fan. Well, that's true, but abuse the players if they're not winning. One of the first things I remember screaming as a kid was, you know, and like a 15, 16-year-old when he came up was just screaming from the back of the garden, just like this. Skate, Greshner, skate! Because he wouldn't because he was a little, he was out of it. Let's be polite to say he was out of it. He's steered out of that skips.

I think the only guy in the Modern Rangers, or two guys really on the Modern Rangers that get hate are Nash and Gerardi. Because of the contracts. It's everybody. You think it's everybody? Oh, my God. Well, it'll be Lundquist soon. Probably. Because we also turn on everybody.

I think if they could get a reasonable trade of any kind, they should get rid of them. But how do you look at the last, like, five years where the decade before that, it was just bad? It was just missing the playoffs every year, spending money on three agents, whole league. But like, now, like, I understand they didn't get in the cup. Sather. Understand Glenn Sather was given Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier, given them, I will give him full credit for steering out of what could have been a franchise folding situation when Peter Pocklington ran out of psychic power and shopping malls. And as the guy who broke the Gretzky story, I know that whole background.

The whole background of this. And I give him credit for making a pretty good trade and a couple pretty good trades when he got rid of Messier and restocking then. but he hasn't done anything particularly good since about 1993. But 1112 until this year. You didn't enjoy it as a little Renaissance, President's Trophy, conference champion. L.A. King's final. Cup final. The L.A. King's final.

I still wake up in the middle of the night going, Leeds! Leeds! We had the lead in this one! And I also, four of the best Stanley Cup final games I ever saw. And one of the worst. And unfortunately, I was at one of the worst, which was just like, you guys, did you not bring skates? What is going on?

That's a lot of excitement into that serious for it being as short as it was. Well, for a best of best of best of five it was turned out. It was the tightest, it was a tightest five game series. It was murderous. One of those ones you stand up

in the first period of the last game and then just collapse when it ends with the... I mean, I worked in L.A. too, and just, I can't take the king seriously. It has nothing to do with them. It's me. But I worked in L.A. when they wore the velour gold suits.

And it was like, 8,000 people are here today. So it's the 7,500 regulars and 500 of their friends. Right. I can smell Rogi Vashan is smoking a cigar during the game. What is this? Is he a Hall of Famer? Yes, I think so. Yeah?

Yes. Why? Tell it to some people to have to see him. We talked about that in the first segment. We're too young to really understand what it is about him. The only thing I could think of is that he's Dominic Haschuk, but he played in L.A., so no one noticed it. Right. Well, that's the other, I mean, everybody on the West Coast got buried particularly before, really before cable television, certainly.

And before, you know, before anything pre-1985 is sort of like a just a just, a mystery. Right. You could, there could have been guys you probably never, ever heard of who played 10 years

in Vancouver. So East Coast bias in this case is palpable. It is. And it was particularly true in the NHL, which is, which is, there's an East Coast bias.

Certainly it's, it's East Coast. Canada considers everything Canada, the East Coast. So that covers Canada and then the East Coast. It looks like a map of Florida. Right.

Right. But he was a great goaltender. There was never a defenseman in front of him. They always traded the defense. Whenever they developed a defenseman, he was gone within three years. It was never a defenseman in front of him in L.A.

And don't forget, in Montreal, he brought them as a rookie. He did a sort of mini-Dryden. And he had a whole career with the Canadians before he went out to Los Angeles. So, you know, and then at the back end of it with Boston, there was, you know, he was a quality goaltender throughout his career. And then, I mean, you know, in the NHL, they don't segment everything. You can't elect Joe Tori, the player and manager in baseball. He's got to be one or the other. I mean, he was a pretty good executive with the Kings, too.

From the sound of things, you have a pretty liberal approach to the Hall of Fame unless you're just playing by the rules that they've established. Are you a strict Hall of Fame guy where you only take the best of a generation? Or you're someone who says, you know what? If you're Rogie Vashon and you were a fantastic goalie for a number of years, you belong amongst these names. I'd rather see too many than too few. And this is true of all of them because it's very simple.

There's a very bad movie that a friend of mine was in called Cooperstown. Whoa, I don't even remember this movie. It was like a TBS or HBO movie and my friend Josh Charles who played me on TV. Josh Charles from sports. Josh Charles was in this as like the kid and Alan Arkin was in it and Graham Green. And he's a guy gets elected to the Hall of Fame and the catcher's dead and he appears as the ghost. He's elected to the Hall of Fame. And the picture and it's not a good movie, some good performances.

This is like a Field of Dreams thing? Yeah, it's in the wake of Field of Dreams. But there's some good touchy feeling. moments, but there's one line in it, which is like, why don't you elect this guy? It's Cooperstown. We have the room. And it's like, okay, it's, you know, it's the Hall of Fame in any sport. It's Canton, Ohio, Toronto, whatever, you've got there. It's not going to cost us a million dollars, but the damn plaque up. And also, in every sport, you can identify the 10 guys at the bottom who have no business being there. Right. So what are you going to do long term? You're going to

throw them out? No, you have to put in everybody who fits in between. And again, what's the harm? Who are you harming then? Everybody including collectors and investors now has them. Everybody who's got a signed Rogi Vashon uniform, it went up in value this way. I didn't say anything with Lindrosse. What's the harm? Rogi Vashon getting in does not affect the status of Patrick Wai. It's not all of a sudden like, oh, Patrick Wals is in the Hall of Fame that Rue Vichon's in.

Right. We have a maximum number of members and you're thrown out and we break the plaque and you're not allowed ever. That's not the worst idea I've ever heard, though. Throwing them out? A rotating Hall of Fame. We only have a certain amount of plaques. It's like a musical chairs of Hall of Fame. Yeah.

No, that is the worst idea. Because then it's now it starts to cost. Now it's gambling. Because you know nowadays the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame is now, under your idea, it is now a, I don't know, maybe one quarter of the impact of the Hall of Fame is on memorabilia.

Yeah. And what guys can charge for their signatures. Right. So now all of a sudden, you're going to take somebody And one day his signature is worth $12.95 at a show in Brantford, Ontario. And tomorrow it's free with admission. Former Leaf. Former Hall of Famer.

Right. You can still get it on the banner. It goes out in front of the fair market. Yeah, exactly. Former Hall of Fame. Wow. That's like that's the worst designation of anybody in any sport. You see, we were talking before the show.

I've got a business cards made up that say former Cable Hall of Famer. We were talking before the show. you seem pretty happy about Lindrauss getting in, yeah? I do because I always thought people did not get him as the sweetheart he really was. You don't associate that with him whatsoever. No, we don't at all. When he was young and the S.B. Awards were given out to whoever would actually show up to accept them. The team of the year, the University of Connecticut women huskies.

Took a busover. Who were here because, yeah, because it's an hour and a half ride. rather than say the Yankees who are not going to, no offense to my friends on that team either. But Lindrosse came in and my old partner, Dan Patrick, who was a troublemaker of biblical proportions, Lindrosse was like rookie of the year or something. And I, if you remember early in his career,

he used to have not the concussion problems or the serious injuries, but he was always out for 10 days with, you know, like a slightly separated thumb. You know, it's like he'll miss, he's this,

we're going to miss one game with a hairline fracture of his hair. And then it's like seven days later and he still hasn't played. So one night we got a set of highlights and I swear

I had nothing to do with this. There's a tight shot of Lindross he's looking at his fingers. And I say on the air, there's Eric Lindross with the hangnail that will keep him out for the next 12 games.

And it was just, you know, it's a little reality in there and her hyperbole and then comes the SB Awards and Dan tells him about the line in hopes that Lindros will beat the crap out of me. And Lindross comes over to me afterwards and he's all happy because he won the award. He comes over to me and goes, hey look, Keith, no hang nails. And I went, Dan said it.

Oh no, I've just been talking to him about you said it. But now I got a surprise for you. He thinks I don't like you. I told him I was going to come over and beat the crap out of you. I'm a big fan. Let me buy you a beer, which as you know is the end. international Canadian grading for hello in hockey particularly and hello all hockey players worldwide speak can I get your beer so we sit down and the next thing I know he's telling me he said you know

what I always wanted to do in my career and I'm it's like I got beat up somebody or something yeah I always wanted to make a million dollars and I looked at him and I saw it in his eyes and I went you mean for the entirety of your career he went yes and now I'm doing it every year can you believe this have a beer oh the next thing I I know I'm in the limo with Lindross and John Leclair, who has come with him. We're the smartest human beings I've ever met. You're like the third member of the Legion of Doom for an idea. Exactly. We go out and we're now drinking. And of course, if you're standing there and you gesticulate with one hand, you're pointing towards the door. An NHL player

will put a beer in your hand. So at one point, I had five of them, and I can't drink them fast enough. And they're having a great time. And now Lindrosk gets a phone call and he goes, we got to go over to such and such a bar God is there and I said oh this is something unexpected I thought we were just coming down here for the Aspies and it was a night off from the show

we come in and we go to this other bar and I go who's to La Claire God he goes it's what he calls Messier Oh God and he go and we walk into this crowded part and you can see of course because the lights and the few lights in this place

they are shining off of Messier's head Of course it's Christ like now yeah But now also he's bald. So I now flash back to what I said about Messier, which was when they gave him the president's trophy, which whenever it was a year or two earlier, maybe it was the same season, the years conflate after a while. I said, and there's Mark Messier receiving the NHL award for having the closest cropped hair in the league. So I figured Lindrosse didn't kill me, so Messier will. Now I go over to him like trailing between sort of behind Lindrosse to protect me. How drunk are you at this point?

Are you... No, I've only probably had two or three beers because I can't keep... I'm handing them out the passers-byers. You can't give it with players. No, no chance. I learned that in college. Okay.

With my man who went on to play for the Rangers and all the other guys from Cornell who wound up in the pros. There's no chance. Don't even try. Their professionals, just have a sip. And they'll get you new one, a cold one anyway. Later, even if you're not done with it.

So I'm walking behind them going, I'm going to get the crap kicked out. That'll be by Mark Messier. Well, it'll be quick. anyway. And Messier, I'm thinking maybe he doesn't know, and he looks at me, he goes, Keith, Mark Messier, you know what it is? And he rubs

his hand over his head, and he goes, you know what it is? Huh? And I'm going, making a joke before he kills me. He goes, close cropped, eh? It's not close cropped. What it is, is I'm bald, eh? Have a beer. So now, now I'm getting numbing handed beers every 40 to

45 seconds by Lindros. Leclair and Messier. I understand this is when we led, we used to lead sports center with a Black Hawk's Flames game now and again. Coming off live coverage of a Black Hawk's Flames game.

So this was a big deal. And then Richter shows up. And this is like, it's okay, it's name-dropping festival. And Richter, and I, and Richter being, you know, American is just sort of standing

in the side going, yep, these are the guys. And I said, he was out, he was out with the perpetual groin injury. Right. I said, how's your groin? I said,

it's, I know there's a difficult question for one man to ask another. How's your groin? He goes, it's getting better, he said, and you're right. I never, women don't ask me this question. It's really disappointing. So they all fade away, and now I take a look at my watch, and it's 3.45 in the morning. Nice.

And Lindross, we're now at another bar, Lindross starts to stand up. He's still happy about the ESP, which he's been holding half the time. Like an Oscar. Right, yeah. He doesn't realize it's like, well, we would have mailed it to you if you did show it. Or you could have come pick up in Bristol, Connecticut, we would have given you a free lunch.

I'm going to dance on this table, and he gets up, and as he stands up, and he's probably had 40 beers. As he stands up, he knocks over the chair he's in, but I don't mean he picks it up and throws it. I mean, as he stands up, his heel gets caught under the rim of the, and it just topples over it. I mean, I do that like every week sober. And Lindrosco, and he's starting to get up onto the table with what he's got like,

one toe on the table. And then he goes, oh, wait a minute, Johnny. He said, I think I hit my limit. Let's go home. And that was it. Wow. And I said, where are you guys going? And Leclair goes, well, we got practice at eight.

I said, John, how long do you expect to play this game? He goes, not much longer. But hang around with this guy. Bye. And then I get in a cab and I go home. Two days later, I read about it in the post that he was thrown out of this bar. Oh, man. To the disgust of patrons like Tim Robbins.

and Susan Sarandon and on whoever else was supposedly big in 1995 or so. And I was like, this is, I saw what happened. You see the WIP thing that happens in Philly all the time. Exactly. Missed games because if he was hung over or whatever. Because he'd go out. But the guy literally stopped himself

from creating an incident. By the way, right, it was 4 o'clock in the morning. Susan Sarandon left at 12.30. It was just somebody trying to get a plug for the so that's, I mean, apart from his, the dominance of his game went healthy. I have that personal story with him.

I have a affection. I have a minute. I really like your story, but the idea that the Rangers and Flyers all drink together, I haven't been this sad since Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Iron Sheik were pinched in the Jersey Turnpike with drugs in the car together. I mean, they should all be rivals, right? They shouldn't be together in any space. I hate to tell you this, but the camaraderie of hockey is legit.

Oh, no. It's not like the other sports where there are, you know, real enmities and such. The Espies bring people to. That's true. The SPs are the common denominator. No, because neither Messier nor Richter went to the SPs. It was just during the season, and they were out drinking. So it's not quite like that. We didn't want to come on to talk about the SPs.

You wanted to come on to talk about another network, which is SportsNet in Canada. George Strombolopoulos is, you know, an awesome dude. A guy you like a lot. Your avatar is you and him together. His avatar now is you and him together. Yeah, I suggested to him he might want to not do that for the time. As a sign of camaraderie. But you were as fired up about this stuff on sports then, Hockey Night and Canada,

than I've seen you fired up in an election year sometimes. What is it about that that gets you so upset about this whole situation? A, remember this. Of all the sports, I mean, this is, like next week is the 37th anniversary of my debut in the professional end of the business. If you don't count college where we made money, so if you do count college, It's 41 years. The last sport I can just enjoy as a fan is the NHL, period.

Baseball, I watch because I can have a good time at a game because I have friends there and managers who I saw break in as rookie catchers and all the other old man stuff. And even football game, I can go, I know this guy and I saw this is okay, basketball. Okay, well, it's another timeout. I can't really watch basketball anymore. Baseball games, it's not the same hockey since one thing, one rule change, most underrated real change in history of sport, no longer freezing the puck against the boards, has turned the NHL into perpetual motion.

Right. It used to be like the NBA, a stoppage of play every 35 actual seconds. And now, now seven minutes uninterrupted. And just they're going. The NBA is slow. So the last thing I'm a fan of is the NHL, and I will watch three games a night if I can get them.

Let's pause on that for a second. I've often said that my fandom with hockey is different as an American than a Canadians is because I think the Canadians have your experience with other sports with hockey. It's their neighbors. It's their classmates. Right. It's their cousin. It's a communication.

Right. And I've always been able to approach hockey. It's a heritage. Everyone in Canada knows everybody. Right. And I've always been able to approach hockey. You know my friend, Eric? Have a beer.

And I've never... That's his name. Have a beer. I've never had to worry about that. And I feel like even the approach to like rules changes when it comes to the... like the inherently violent part of the sport where a lot of Canadians, you know, will get on their soapbox and try to legislate out a lot of different types of hits or whatever fighting.

It's because they see their, their nephews getting beat up. Right. And shit like that. And I've never felt that about hockey. I've always felt that sort of point of separation to hockey that I feel like you have to do it a little bit. Well, I'll tell you what, what did it to me and why I sort of came back, I see you didn't pay the light bill. The lights just turned out.

I worked at a television network like this once wound up suing everybody. buddies. It's the clapper, I believe. That's it. I didn't work. So the NHL lost me a couple times after, you know, lockouts. A lockout, yeah. Not just the fact that, well, see, I always think your sport's going to be much

more popular if you're playing it. Rather than saying, no, we're not going to have any season this year because we can't figure out how to do this. The better part of three times. But the timing of it, after the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, it's like, this is the chance because now all of a sudden,

everybody in Madison Avenue suddenly recognizes this. That's not a cliche. And then wasn't one of them right after the Ducks won the first one in Southern California? No. Or a year later. It was the Lightning. All right. So you could have,

that's it. But one of the ones was close to the first Southern California. Or was it the first Kings championship? No. It was the Ducks about a few years later on. The Ducks lost to the devils before. Oh, yeah. Ducks were in 03.

All right. So each time there was a lockout, they had sealed off growth in a new market. Essentially, a market that was not maximized. And you're sitting there going, okay, that's right. It's Gary Bettman, Cornell Law. I know Cornell. I used to walk past the Cornell Law School.

And I always made sure that I crossed the street to the other side, so I did not get sucked into the vortex of hell that it represented the law school. I understand that. But they lost me for a while. And when I went back and started watching the NHL in the last couple of years, the level of excitement was great. than I remember as a kid. And that's, I mean, what could you,

so it should be doing better than it is. Then two years ago, and I had watched the, I had bought the packages and watched hockey night and just like it didn't register. Like, oh, yeah, that's the guy who always is dead. Oh, there's Don Cherry in a suit I wouldn't bury an imaginary elephant in.

Okay. And he stood me up for a live shot in 1990 at KCBS in Los Angeles. It was very staid in vanilla. It was like, okay, so you're part of that group there that liked to freeze the puck against the boards and just make the last three minutes, 27 minutes in chronological time. And then one night I tune in in 2014 and I see this guy in a like glowing blue suit. And he's got a little unshaved beard and he's basically hopping around this gigantic set. And it's like, wait, Kelly Rudy, who I could never pull a quote out of with a pair of pliers when I was.

as a local guy in L.A. is the, is the, with, with, Caprios? Holy Christ. And they're, they're, they're, they're being asked good questions. Wait a minute. I went from, you know, what the F is this to, I kind of like this. Yeah. And then I started realizing that I was no longer watching on Saturdays just for, I wasn't watching at all on Saturdays for the matchup. I was watching, it was maximizing how much of the studio show I was going to see. And I realized, well, this is, this is, this is, this is the best studio, show on the continent.

Wow. That's what I thought. I mean, you think any of the football shows or any good? NBA is always the one people hold up with the Barclay and Kenny Smith. You take Charles Barkley out of that and the audience would be three people. Yeah, you're probably right. It's Barclay. It's Barcl.

It's like the NHL coverage on NBC. It's Doc and Eddie Olchuk is great. Yes. Yeah, the rest, uh, boo! Yay! Not so much. Could you just get them chairs? Because at least then when they're sleeping,

and looking at their sleeping standing up. I think you'd be a lot of information of that broadcast on NBC. Oh, boy, do they. Lots of info coming at you. Junior hockey. Well, I worked at NBC sports and I know what the premise of it is. It's like, well, this could be as interesting as the games, but let's make sure it's not.

Why, why, why? We don't want to compete. We don't want to make the games look less interesting. Is that a rightsholder thing? I don't have any clue what the point of it is. I don't, I don't understand it. Where does it come from? Who's saying these things, these people to talk about these certain things aren't interesting.

My suspicion? Okay, my suspicion. Yeah, speculate. Where did Gary Bettman work before the NHL? The NBA. Okay, so if it's like the Manchurian candidate, the movie. Not the actual candidate. Well, I mean, sure, why not?

Lawrence Harvey. If it's like that, then these are all NBA spies designed to keep hockey down. This is quite a long con then. We're up over 20 years. Well, because they've got the cooperations of the Canadians because they bought them all beers. See how it all ties together. So you're watching Strombo. You like to relax by playing a game of Solitaire.

So you're watching Strombo. And you're loving Strombo. You're loving everything he's doing. Well, because I've been in that role before. I used to do the baseball games on Fox. I used to do the pregame show on Fox, and I was stuck with Steve Lyons. And when you understand that his nickname is Psycho and it's a compliment, All right? And all that

Steve Lyons does this all day. Why don't we have more lighting in this room? It's too cold. It's too warm. It's too hot. It's too cold. And then six hours later he comes back. It's too warm in here. Where's our advertising? I haven't seen it on the Billboard of Terry Bradshaw outside. Are we on yet? Okay, okay. Hi, I'm Steve.

I got him an Emmy Award nomination. And then later on in 2013, not that it was the similar caliber whatsoever talent, is much higher talent. But I did like a six analyst show. at TBS for baseball for three weeks for the postseason, which was literally, you know, give me a whip and a chair to get all these guys in here and try to, you know, no, we want to go to Pedro next.

Pedro's not out here tonight, remember? Oh, that's right. I forgot. I lost him in somewhere in that spectacle of six different announcers. So when I saw what Strabo was doing, which was, there was a personality there, obviously. He's a big personality in a size, small suit. But he's, but what his most of his, personality was asking people questions that allowed them to to provide expertise that they might

not have known they had. And you sit there going, he's doing the ringmaster bit, which is very tough. He's following a great tradition that's completely different. He's been told to do something else. He's by himself very entertaining. He never gets in the way of the game, which was always my problem because I would go, well, no, that's not exactly what you saw there. Historically, that's not the first time that happened. It's like, shut up, Keith. They don't want to know this. He never gets in the way that way. There's not so much expertise. There's not so much syrup or saccharin that you

go, oh no, that when they do a touching piece or the family in trouble or if players doing something great in the community, it hits home. And then on top of everything else, they take Ron McLean and put him on the Sunday thing, the

Sunday show, hometown hockey where this kind of approach, and I call them saccharin on Twitter, and that's not fair because that implies it's not genuine. Alcom. Syrippy. Syripy.

Syripy. Yeah. But on home, the hometown hockey thing, which is about sort of everybody, everybody in a room of 600 people is Pierre McGuire. All they want to talk about is the entire, you know,

you read the old sporting news hockey guide register of everything. Then in 57, he spent half the year with the Flynn Flan bombers, and he was traded mid-season for Darcy Wachaluck. It's a real boys in the pond. But it's all. But it's all that on, and he fits into that perfectly. It's like that was created for him.

And I thought, well, here's that rarest of things where you take the old host and you give him something that might actually be better for him to do. You keep him on the air in the old format with the guy from weekend at Bernice in between the first and second. Hey, no, look over here. You see, now, you can't do this. When I had Jerry Cheever and Bobby, you can't. What you don't, you see right there, don't interrupt me. That's Don't Cherrie.

just put that on a loop. And that's still, and McLean is the one who still somehow makes that work. And now, okay, so then they got this, and they have all these ancillary shows, and I began to really like the, like, Leah Hxtall's work, and I thought Cory Hirsch got better so much in the course of a season. Yeah, he was great. It was fantastic, and they laid all these people

off because TV sports management is stupid, no matter what country you go to. But this guy, and this guy Moore, who, and the way they did it, they dropped hung scrumbo out to dry and let it dangle there for a week and who do you think leaked that?

Do you think it was George Strombolopoulos leaked that story? No. So that narrows it down to Rogers or Ron McLean. Who was quoted in one of the Canadian newspapers that all the eyes have not been dotted and the T's crossed yet?

He's quoted after the story leaks. That points a suspicious finger at one's self. So the whole thing bothered me and it was there's one BBC World News show that I really like Oh, which one? It's called Outside Source

with a guy named Ross Atkins. It's on like 4 o'clock Eastern time in the afternoons. And then it's either that or Hockey Night in Canada were my favorite shows. And I'm talking about in the English-speaking world. Wow. So as far as I'm concerned, they canceled Hockey Night in Canada

and treated people who have become professional friends of mine. I didn't know Scrombo for Mall. I've heard the name, and I went, oh, I heard that name before. That's who he is. Okay, I like him. I met him once. That picture is the only time we've ever been in the same place

at the same time. Yes. And I had no idea. When he said, well, I kind of modeled my career after you. It was like, no, no, you don't know how it turns out. Well, I mean, he... Go to the back page there. He did just get fired. Well.

Technically, yeah. Technically, I only got fired once. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. And so is he. Yes. The thing about Strombo and this whole thing that I find fascinating is the fact that it seemed to be a decision made based on ratings. Right.

But the ratings are going to go up as soon as the Canadian team. This is good again. It's Trambo's fault that all the KD's teams are bad. How many, in his period of time at Hockey Night in Canada, how many Canadian teams made the playoffs in two seasons? There was a few of the previous year. No, no. It was just the Canadians in 2015.

Oh, yeah. So it's his fault that they overpaid and had a situation that was a potential Jay Leno Redux situation. Yeah. Sure. Get Leno to retire against his will and bring in Conan O'Brien but put Leno on every night of the week at 10 so you can suck all the comedy out of the room first.

A sane idea that was. And then bring him back to do the show. What could go wrong? Right. So it's not that. It's the fact that he wears bright suits. That's, you see how much coverage there was or how George dresses.

To go to the tailor. Right. I'm sitting there going. That's insane. That's a pretty sharp-looking suit. And everybody else looks pretty good. And by the way, compared to the stuff Don Cherry wears, it looks like he's dressed as George looked like he was dressing as a nun every weekend.

But you bring up the Leno thing, and I think there is a parallel to be drawn here because they kept Leno, one, because they were paying them a shit ton of money, but they kept them because they were worried about the new thing not working at 1130. And in this case... And also because most people in television management are just palpable... Well, they're so fearful because really, none of them knows what works in television, why things work in television.

Right. So it's like, well, I'm making this decision for good, but the choice I did not take, I'm going to keep over here in my back pocket, just in case. The thought was Conan would bring kids to this night show. They were watching them at 12.30. And one of the things in this decision is, this idea that was put forth in the interviews after all the announcements,

kids don't watch hockey night in Canada. The older generations watch hockey night in Canada. Kids will watch when the Leafs are going for a championship, But they're doing other shit on a Saturday night while watching hockey. They're online. They're on Twitter, but they're not watching hockey. So you're committing to the audience that's dying. You're committing to the audience that's dying, but you're committing the audience in the short term that'll watch.

That seems to be what they're saying. They're reminding me a Leno. It doesn't have the spending money that the kids have. And your entire business model is predicated on doing what you did two years ago. You took a bold step, and after two years, you bailed out of it. Who should get fired in that equation? Right. Who gets fired?

This fellow more? Right? That's the name? Mm-hmm. Or George Dromblaw? Who gets fired in that one? George or Moore? To me, I fire more. Well, I can't, I can't fire any because my other podcast is on sports.

I understand that. This has nothing. He knows nothing. I agree, totally. He knows nothing. And by the way, they know nothing about this. And he who shall not be named, who got, helped get somebody elected to the All-Star game. He knows nothing about this.

I mean, he was really like, don't do. I'm just, by the way, that's the other thing. second best show to me in sports. Second best studio show was the 5 p.m. Saturday. Merrick does, yeah. Merrick, PJ, and who got fired. Yeah. And John Shannon.

Because it's like the pre-free game show. Right. It's like when you hear salted caramel ice cream with mustard. It's like, how in the hell is that what? And it was tremendous. The other. Tremendous show. They had fun and it was a high-paced, wrap-around show for an hour.

And I sit there absorbed by it. Yeah. And at this stage, to get me absorbed by, television, good luck. The other thing that I... I don't watch shows of people who I put on the air. That's how jaded I am. I have to go to other countries to watch television.

It's like, no, I like this English or this Canadian stuff. Oh, man. For some reason, I keep thinking, I want to have a beer. Let me ask you this. Do you think if Strombo was a little paler, a little older, a little white-haired more? The Canadians are very... They're mad at me about this. He put this on our previous episode about this, and they hate it.

Like what is he not have in common with everybody else on TV when it comes to hockey? See, no, this is what I will say in defense of all the Canadians I have ever known. I'm sure there is a nativist thing there, but I don't think it's anything resembling ours. And I don't think, I mean, this is a country in which in the previous generation, hockey was the means for people from Eastern Europe to become assimilated. I mean, the there wasn't, the Bruins had a yuk line. That wasn't because they played the ukulele. It was because they were all of Ukrainian descent. Amen.

And the Kraut line, when we could still use words like that, Clapper and Milt Schmidt and why am I forgetting the last guy on the, Bobby Bauer, was, you know, because they were Germans from Kitchener, which wasn't named Kitchener at the time. They changed it to Kitchener on the eve of World War I or World War II. I can I remember I can't remember what it was. The name of it was, I can't remember what it was, Their community, at least, had a completely dramatic name like, you know,

Kill a Nunn or something. Jesus. And I, well, all right, look, I'm 90% or 50% German heritage, so I'm allowed to say something. That's all right. My point being, I don't, I don't know that that's, I mean, he, at some point, if you're looking at him, you go, well, I'm not sure about the beard. And that's a hell of a, that's a hell of a suit. I mean, you know, did you, did you, I actually, I think I said this to him once.

I said, was Oscar Wilde buried in that suit? That's a, damn, that's that really. It was a pretty sharp-looking suit. Like, pulled it, pulled it right off the sofa, that one of those plush sofas in that bar that I had drinks with Lindross and Messier. I mean, that's a really sharp-looking suit. But, like, so many responses were, oh, he doesn't fit in. Like, that just seems like code to me. No, I don't fit in.

No, I think it's the same thing you're going to start seeing, I mean, around a lot of American television as, as the current generation. of familiar names. I mean, who's the last breakthrough American TV sportscaster not associated with one sport? Wow, that's a great question. Geez. Because I have a very good friend of mine who's a little older than me and was very worried about his future, and I pointed out to him that he's the youngest version of him

that exists in the business. Mike Tarrico? Maybe, but even so, he's, well, all right, you can say basketball and football. Right. But I'm thinking somebody in the studio somewhere. Yeah, no. There aren't generalists anymore, and the latest new general show succeeded critically and financially and in terms of ratings was probably part in the interruption.

And that's 15 years ago. Yeah, you're right. When I went back to ESPN, I was a great damn show, if I must say so myself, and it went nowhere, largely because it was never on the same day, at same time, two days in a row, but the quality of the show meant nothing because people were like, as I used this analogy before, if I went back and did SportsCenter tomorrow with Dan Patrick and our third host, Jesus. And the lead story is that across the world,

In every known language written up in the sky, in gold letters, has been the message, Chicago Cubs fans receive eternal life. Right? In every known language simultaneously. Right? And we're all there commenting on it. Two-thirds of the audience is going, I don't want to know about this. Who's the starting quarterback for the Browns next year?

And they go over to a podcast or somewhere else because we've balkanized sports. So what I'm saying is what I think most of the reaction here, not, he doesn't fit in was he wasn't Ron McLean and they were used to Ron McLean. But that's the other thing too is that the only way to really gauge that reaction in 2016 is through social media. And that's the other aspect of this too, is that I feel

like sports net, much like professional wrestling, much like Hollywood, has become beholden to the loud minority opinion on social media as being the reason for the catalyst for change. And now I understand

this somewhat defeats the intent of it, but I have to tell you something I did a year ago that did, among other things, gave me an extra hour a day to my life. So essentially elongated my life by 365 hours a year, allowed me to spend more time walking my dogs, so I got healthier. My hair turned darker, and it all has to do with social media. What I do is I reconfigured the bar at the bottom of my Twitter where it says, where the at responses are, where I could read tweets sent into me. and I disabled it. So now I have to go through a whole series of intricate steps to read incoming tweets,

other than those of people who I follow. And suddenly, I became a happy guy with no longer growing a social media tumor somewhere and no longer going, F you, you bad. It's like, why am I doing this? Because the three of us are argumentative by nature, and we also believe in the core of our being that our words can affect change. Right. This has to be corrected.

It's mistaken. You don't believe that? Every time I tweet at somebody who has an egg for an avatar because I believe that I can affect change. I just saw Pedro Gomez is a pretty good friend of mine at ESPN. Apparently he's got a kid at the Little League World Series and he was taking some heat from a blog and there's a whole series of tweets about it. And I went and looked at whoever was complaining about it.

The person was complaining about it had a sports blog, and we're 36 followers. You have tweeted. Pedro, you have spent more time on this guy's blog than he has followers. That's the thing. Like when they looked up strombo. When they looked up Strombo, they didn't check the follower count. They saw the volume.

Right. And they saw the buzzwords. Also somebody, and also that you do have, it's very difficult sometimes, particularly for sports fans to process the idea that a guy could do more than one thing. And somebody said to me when I first said on Twitter that this, and then I had them on my show on ESPN, that this was the best show that I'd seen, not only on the subject, but on a one topic, one sports show in the continent. Somebody said, no, he's just Ryan Seacrest, but Canadian. I was like, no, wait a minute. He did a news and pop culture interview show every night. He's got a music show.

He's fantastic. And every one of those interviews that look like they're kind of like, hey, how you doing, everything else? And did you actually kill your wife? I mean, it's true. And the guy goes, yeah, I did. Oh, okay, great. There's always something out of those roundtable interviews with captains.

Who's going to get anything out of that? And he finds there's something pulled out of it. He's not a lightweight by any stretch of the imagination. So it's essentially what I thought was. you could not have done better than the way that show was configured and considering that the likelihood is if you paid $5 billion for hockey and you can't make it work in Canada, the firing of people whose salaries probably did not, I'm going to go wildly high, did not exceed $3 million in total a year.

That's probably not going to save you a lot of money. It's like what's been going on in Bristol. That's not going to save them all the money they wasted on that $125 million studio when everybody's now watching their shows on a phone. So the studio that we are doing using now, this little corner of this studio is more than is necessary for an entire television sports network. Okay, that's my right. Last thing I wanted to ask you, and you've been more than generous with your time. Yeah, I've got to go soon.

I know. Last thing is. Thank God for the subway. ESPN is getting hockey back in the World Cup of hockey this September. Yes. What is, what, hockey fans have a certain impression of ESPN in hockey. When the NHO was there, we felt kind of marginalized. What do you, what do you, how do you see during? your time there after your time there, ESPN's relationship with hockey. And do you agree

with some of the people on the board of governors and own that own team that say the NHL would be exponentially bigger if they had a... Of course it would because very simply ESPN mastered right about in the middle of my first stint there, mastered the idea of taking stuff that isn't really news and that is really promotional material for a sport or league and making it into news. They did it with, frankly, everybody laughed when they picked up the world. Cup in 1994, the soccer world cup. And I was like, yeah, Janluca, Palauuca, that's where it comes from, because

that's, we used to say that, and there's a recording of Gary Miller using that name, and then a bunch of MFs followed it. That's where that comes from. It's a great tape, and I'll send it to you, but no, I won't, because you'll put it on in a millisecond. But the

NHL in 1994, you asked, I never asked to answer this question. What was like to be a Ranger fan when they won the the cup in 1994? Why was working that night? So I did the lead highlight for the seven game of Stanley Cup finals. It was four minutes long. Then we threw live to our correspondent at the Garden, Dan Patrick, who went there to that. And then Tarrico was my co-host on Sports Center filling in for him.

Levy was also there working in the locker rooms. And I had gone a couple of days before to the ESPN suite at the Garden for this game, whatever, four, with a friend of mine named Wally Joyner, used to play first base for the Angels. Yeah. Wally Absorbinge Joyner. From Atlanta. From Atlanta, yes, thank you, Chris. I went to high school with Chris Berman. I've been listening to this stuff for 45 years.

Please do not. The only two that I care about are Wally Obsorbinge Joyner and Kevin Large Mouth Bass, I thought, was pretty good, too. When I was 12 years old, I used to hear this stuff in the office, in the office of our high school radio station and a newspaper. But it was simpler than he simply would use the full name. He would pretend to be illiness. himself Ily Nastassi. I'm I'm Iliannistasi today. I'm just, I'm doing tennis. It's tomorrow I will be Clifford Ray.

I was talking about the Stanley Cup finals and Wally Joyner, who grew up in Atlanta next to the guy who won the name the team contest for the Atlanta Flames and got Lifetime. Didn't work out too well for him. Lifetime Flames season tickets. So Wally Joyner, who with his Southern accent

like this, he'd be the last person you would expect. He was a huge hockey fan, and he, and he was in New York on an off night for him for the Stanley Cup finals as his friend David Howard, who was a third baseman. We piled into the ESPN suite and watched. And it was the center of the hockey world, ESPN. And frankly, you could put it if you're going to be on as the cable sports, as the cable industry just recedes and just implodes into a black hole kind of operation to eventually it'll be an inch and a half square. As that happens, sorry, it's going to happen.

What do you want? Do you want to take a little less money and take the rest of that in oomph? ESPN hype. In awareness? I used to see some of the research done on hockey versus basketball versus football in the Northeast, and obviously in Canada and in a strip of the Midwest. Hockey holds its own in terms of loyalty and being the favorite sport in these areas with football, baseball and basketball. In many

communities, Boston, it's essentially a four-way tie, even with the Patriots stepping out from the pack in the last couple of years, and the Red Sox stopping being you know, team martyrdom. But in Chicago, it's like, Cubs, Cubs, Cubs. No, the Blackhawks are like getting 97% of the support of the

Cubs. And they're well ahead of the Bulls. And a couple of different business decisions, and what happened with the NHO was it didn't go back at all in the last 20 years. It just didn't grow. But right now it's being threatened in terms of popularity in this country by Major League Soccer. That's not good.

And what you need to do is think long term. But unfortunately, most sports owners in all sports with this, I mean, you're being offered, here's $10 million now. Or you get nothing and your son, when he gets the franchise, it'll be worth $200 million more than it is now. And you sit there going, well, screw him. You know what I can do with $10 million now? I can get myself a beer.

So that's, yeah, I mean, it would entirely be worth it because. the exposure and particularly the infrastructure around it. There's no, there's nothing. I mean, we can criticize anything you want about the studio shows or anything else that NBC does with hockey. The problem is not that. It's that there is no infrastructure. There is no 24-hour

a day NBC Sports News Network that can be, you know, reporting. That's the rival ESPN. It's like, oh my, did you see that free agent signing today? I mean, the Rangers signed a 700-year-old player. And three hours of conversation. That's a really good one. None of it. Because the argument shows on ESPN are half

at a time when on MSNBCSN, or NBCSN, it's like bass fishing. Right. It's like they don't have that component on that network for whatever reason. And they don't, they've not created it for hockey, which is the other thing I don't understand. Like there is no roundtable debate, hot stovey show on NBC, and there's an audience for it. Sure. I mean, the NHL should get its own network and do something like, you know what I, actually what I, what, they should have done also, talk about planning and thinking, they should have

simply said on those nights, we're going to take hockey night in Canada and, and Wednesday night hockey, and we're going to pay Rogers for the studio shows. Because no sports fan is ever going to say, I don't understand that. That's too smart. That's too much information. They're never going to say that unless it is presented to them. And now I shall read from the NBC book of hockey. In the third period, there was a face off. Suffer through a few tragically hip references, but that's all. That's it.

All right, yeah. So what? And instead, he gets canned. Right. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I hear all the time that Gary Bettman's done a great job as commissioner of the National Hockey League the last 20 years. Here's another question for you. Yes.

If the problem is Canada and Canadian teams not making the playoffs, you expand to Las Vegas? How does this help? How does this help? You make new fans in Las Vegas. You mint them. You mint new fans. You grow a new market.

Easier than going to Quebec where they're all already hot-comps. But look, but that's exactly the Las Vegas decision is exactly the kind of cynicism we're just talking. about. Do you invest in now or do you invest in the future? I can sell you this big, big, empty room full of air for $500 million or you in Quebec because of the difference in the pan, whatever, you can only raise $400 million. So we're going to give it to Las Vegas. There's an atoll in the Pacific that has offered $550 million to Jim Dolan for the Rangers. He'd sell and they'd move the team to, you know, well, it's a great place. It's warm all the time. It was called Bikini Island.

It's where they tested the first atomic. It's a little, you know, if you're planning on having children, don't come here because it could affect your testes. But look at how much money we've made. And you're making new fans. Right. And then, you know, 20 years from now, when Major League Indoor Kickball is getting more terms of attention and coverage in the NHL, and the NHL is the best sport and best league there is, this is why? because they went to Las Vegas instead of Quebec. And having said all this and now ruined,

the NHL gave me free tickets to the Penguins Rangers playoff game, and that would be the last time. That ever happens. Well, we'll get you in the nerdist suite, so don't worry about that. Thank you. I don't have to sit next to Jonah Carey, though, doing it. Potentially, you might have to. I've already done that way.

Keith Oldman, you're a gentleman and a scholar, anything you want to plug in our remaining moments here. I'm wearing a Lance Netherie shirt. You are. We all thought it was a Derek, Stefan. when you walked in? Number 21, Lance Netherie, New York Rangers, 1980 to 89 to 81,

college classmate of mine. And now a big hockey guy in Germany, had one great playoff series, as I mentioned to you on the way in, beat the St. Louis Blues single-handedly. Rangers went on to play the Islanders. It's like, this is my brother from Cornell, Netherie.

And they, all that was left of him was his skates. And they traded him the next year to Admond. He played one game and went to Germany, but Lance, Lance was a great college hockey player, possibly the best. Thank you, Keith. That was my plug. That was it.

I don't have anything else to plug. That was a good plug, though. Thank you. We thank you, Keith Olberman. Great job. Great interview. Doing your thang here on these very puck soup airwaves. A man a legend.

Can't believe he said the things he said. An opinionated man. He is. Free agency arrives probably by the time you listen to this podcast or after you are listening to it. Or weeks since. Yes. Maybe it's August. On some beautiful beach somewhere like,

let me binge Buck Soup and listen to what they're talking about. And you already know where Stamcoast went and everything else. As we do this show, we're a couple days out from free agency. So we're actually going to take it on in a different way. Before we do, Seth Jones, $5.4 million per season for the Columbus Blue Jackets, who luckily avoid what would have been a rather calamitous situation if they had let Jones get an offer sheet for them.

5.4 AAV, 6 years for Jones. I'm not necessarily sold on him yet, to be honest with you, but I think it's a guy that once you trade Ryan Johansson, you've got to keep him in the fold, and, you know, he might get better. I just love the whole offer sheet thing again. Every summer, it's the same thing. Look out for offer sheets.

If Seth Jones doesn't get offer sheeted, like the threat of it's always there, if he's not going to get offer sheeted in that situation, I mean, why would anybody else? get offer sheeted. You know, you do have Jacob Truba with the Winnipeg Jets where the Boston media has pieced together that

according to Joe Haggerty, the Boston ruins are considering tendering a lucrative offer sheet to defenseman Jacob Truba. Look. Now, here's the thing about Boston, though. They don't have a first, a second, I'm sorry, they don't have a second or a third round pick

in the upcoming draft. So the only thing they can do to offer sheet somebody is to give them a giant, Wombo offer that would be basically $7 million a year AAV to a guy like Truba, but it would be tabulated at 9.8, so it means that you'd give up four first-round picks for Jacob Truba. But here's the thing, right? Like, if you really...

I'm going to come to the Boston's defense or anybody's defense that does this. Franchise defensemen are the hardest single thing in this game to get. They're harder than number one center. They're harder than a good goalie. They're the hardest thing to find. of 25 minute a night guy who could put up points and be the guy. And if they think Trubes that guy... Why do they think Trubes that guy?

He's 22 and he's got... He's really good. He's got the tools for it. He's really good. He's better than Dougie Hamilton was. But like, not... Would you rather have Dougie Hamilton at 7 and 7 or 7 and 6 and a half and your draft picks or Truba at what would be 9 and a half for the same amount of time?

Like, it's insane. It's an insane rumor. It's an insanely Not believable Totally It's like whenever like in sports around here Whenever there's like an awesome free agent It's like sources tell me that

Bryce Harper is looking to be a Yankee Like that shit That shit rumor geography rankings Okay Is Boston number one as far as the most Bad shit rumors? No New York New York is every dude

There's dudes in my Twitter Who are like how can the Rangers get Stamcoast? Well I mean I'm talking I was talking media generated Oh Yeah not fan I mean, fan generated, you know, everybody's delusional in every market, but I'm talking about the media.

Media generated delusion. I would say... Toronto. Toronto would be right up there. Boston would be right up there. New York, not so much because it's only coming from Larry Brooks. Yeah, I mean, and Edmonton's got some crazy stuff, too. Edmonton's a really good choice, actually.

Edmonton's great. I saw you going back and forth with Rishaw yesterday on Twitter. That's so funny. Well, it's like... You didn't see the tweet, so the tweet was, um, Ryan Rashog said that there's interest in Milan-Luchich, and if they get Luchich, that probably opens the door to give them the chance to trade Taylor Hall,

to which Rich responded, yes, Taylor Hall has been a placeholder for all these years until they got Malan Lujich. Yeah, exactly. And I laugh. Their situation isn't really interesting, because I think there's actually a dance partner for them, which is the devils.

The devils need everything they have, and the devils have everything that they want. What? The devils have defensemen, and the Oilers have front-line players they're going to trade. Fuck it. Come on. Adam Larson, Severson?

Severson for Hall, straight up, let's do it. How about Severson for Nuge? Oh my God, are you insane? David and Severson couldn't barely crack the lineup last year. He was a healthy scratch at time. They love him in Canada, though. They don't know that yet. Oh, my God.

They hear that name. They're like, David Severson sounds like a really good defenseman's name. Right, and he's right-handed and he scores a goal occasionally. So maybe. We don't know anything about it. We're like, Nail Yacapov. That guy sounds awesome. Wait, so he's Russian when he was the first pick?

And his name is Nassian. That'll fit into the blue collar New Jersey lifestyle. Pounder and hammers. Oh, thunder roared. By the way, you know how we do this show? And then, like, I walk out of here and then, like, we tweet each other, text each other like 20 times about all the news that breaks. Yeah. Everything is going to go, is going to happen between now and the time this happens.

Seriously, like Shat and Kirk is going to get traded. That's why we're going to approach this thing a little differently. So let's make this evergreen as they say in the business. So to make it as evergreen as we can, instead of doing the where is there we going to end up or stamp coast this, stamp coast this, Stamco's that Detroit. I think that the best way

to approach it would be just to tell you our five non-stampocan free agents that were most kind of interested

in seeing where they end up. And so, you know, every year we go into the summer and every year everybody gets

overpaid and we all by the way, has there been a contract that you've seen in the last two months that was universally

praised? Um, Philip Forsberg? Maybe. That's, maybe that's it. Yeah, that might be the only one. Like, people think that six in like four or five years is going to look like a bargain. But it's like every single contract that gets from it, it's like, oh, my, oh, my, how do you pay that? Was Roman Yossi the last two years or is that older than that?

That's older than that. So basically anything in Nashville is doing it. Anyway, David Poil was either like a complete 450 foot home run or Shea Weber's contract. Right. David Poil is either signing guys of good contracts or giving alleged. sexual assaulters a second chance. Like it's just, there's no middle ground.

There's no, like, oh, I think you probably overpaid by half a million. It's either Ribeiro. Right. Or Rwino's. Right. So we decided to craft the five free agents that we were most interested

in finding out where they fall, where they head. I'll go first. Franz Nielsen. Franz Nielsen is a solid, as solid as you're going to find defensive forward. He's got a little bit of offensive upside. He's going to get paid a lot of money. He's going to get, like, Michael Frulik,

plus some money. Oh, he'll get more than that. It'll get more than that, right? And I'll be interested to see exactly where he goes and in what role he plays. Does somebody out there think he's Patrice Bergeron? I think he's a number two center. And cast him as a number two center.

Yeah, I think he is for sure. He's better than a number three. Like everyone said Andrew Shaw's a three and kind of a two, which he is not. He's really not that guy at all. Why would you need? I didn't even talk about that. Like, to me, Brendan Gallagher is a better Andrew Shaw.

And you already have Brendan Gallagher. Why do you need Andrew Shaw? Like, Andrew Shaw, his peak is like 35 points. Yeah. Like, that's his, like, he's, we'll say his ceiling is 40 points. That's his ceiling. And you're going to give him six years and essentially $4 million a year. And look at the guys he gets to play with in Chicago, and that's what he produces.

He was on, he's played power play time last year, and he still couldn't crack 35 points. Like, what in the world? Like, if he's in your top six in Montreal, something's gone wrong. Like, if Thomas Pekanets and, you know, Galchenio can, if he's a lot of, if he's a lining up alongside those guys like oh and like at the term and the boy oh my daughter they're those sons of bitches I know how to take that constant resources yeah I can't believe he's oh the by the way the aliens and independence they resurgence are trying to steal the earth's core that's the plan this time oh my so the ticking time bottom of the movie the ticking time in

the movie is a giant laser drill that's trying to reach the earth's core and the only ones that are treasure hunters that were looking for sunken gold and just happened to have their boat next to the drilling laser from the spaceship. What's the movie really about? How much cocaine was involved in the pitch to that movie? For the rest of the podcast, I'm going to drop little nuggets about the Independence Day resurgence plot. You could do that.

Like, is this real or not? No way it's done to do. Who's your number five on your list, sir? Cut me off while I'm talking Independence Day. How dare you, sir? I want to know where Brett Connolly is going to go. Brett Connolly, an interesting story in the sense that the Boston Brewers. Everyone's acquired him as a, as a reclamation project of sorts.

A guy who had a lot of talent. And then said, fuck it. And never could put it together in the definitive. You're 24. You're too old for us. Get the hell out of here, bro. Like, he's never really, like, he had, like, a quick chance with Tampa. But then, like, he was kind of like Jonathan Druen before Jonathan Durenne was

Johnathan Duren, only not as good as Jonathan Dore. And he had, like, a couple of chances of at Boston. Like, he played up on the top line for a little bit there on the right side. Yeah. But in a way, to me, like, he's 24, but, like, I look at him as, like, a dude who's, like, 20, who's really only had one long season in the NHL. He had nine goals. Because of injuries and stuff.

Yeah, injuries. It's going to be like one of these. It's going to be one of these prospects that bounces from team to team based on potential, like, a super happy fun ball before he ends up in the KHL. I still think you can be an NHL player. I don't know where he's going to go, but I think he's going to be cheap, and you can, if you're looking for, like, a bargain on your top six on the right side, like, I don't know. It depends on where he goes.

Number four on my list is, it's Rimer, Rimer. It is James Rimer. Who's that? James Rimer, goaltender, formerly of the Toronto Maple Leafs and formerly of the San Jose Sharks. I think he's by far the best UFA goaltender on the market. If you need one, you're probably going to sign him, probably for a decent amount of money. But the talk at the draft was that he was going to end up in Calgary as a battery mate with Brian Elliott. But that seems like something that I wouldn't necessarily be too happy about if I was Brian Elliott, thing rhyme is probably good enough to do exactly to him as Jake Allen did to him in St. Louis,

which is steal his job for stretches of weeks. And going back to Elliot, I'm tired of hearing, oh, he plays for Ken Hitchcock. You know who always plays for Ken Hitchcock? Jake Allen, and he fucking sucks. Yeah. That's too strong. But the point is that he's not as good as Brian Elliott. Like, everyone's always like, oh, yeah, take him out of that system and he's going to be,

well, Jake Allen's living that system for the same amount of time, but he can't hold the job. I don't understand. This is one of those moments that I love the podcast so much because no one is listening to Sportsnet 590 in Toronto and Jake Oh Jake Allen's a good young player. He just needs to put his game together. Jake Allen fucking sucks. He's a fucking terrible goalie. He's the worst goalie in the league back

after this. No, he's not the worst, but like Martin Brodor showed up and had an 895 save percentage over the course of a month playing for Ken Hitchcock. Like, why is it all? Why is it only for Brian Elliott? I love the L.A. move for the flames. They would have overpaid for Bishop and then they would have been stuck with him forever.

I really love that move for them a lot. So that was a pretty smart. Even if Ryan up there, hey, more power to him. He's going to be fine up there. But I just think at the end of the day, it's like the last thing Brian Elliott needs. It's like, hooray, I finally get my shot to be a starter. Holy shit, who's that? It's James Reimer. Whoa, that actually kind of rhyme there. Yeah, it rhymes in sort of a son-heimish way. Yeah, like that sounds like a good Harambe song parody. By the way, for those listening, search Harambe on Twitter. Harambe song parody Twitter is the best Twitter. It's so good. Almost as good as Harambe Vin-Sgully Twitter.

I can't believe you talked about that. What are the odds? No one picked up on that. Who's your number four on your list of UFAs you give a shit about? I like David Perron. Why? Because wherever he goes. He may go somewhere and have eight goals and seven assists in 58 games,

or he might score 25 goals depending on where he goes. Like, Pittsburgh, did it work? Anaheim? Great. Remember the aforementioned bouncing around this league based on potential? That's my... We were talking about picking five guys that were like off the beaten path. And so far you've picked James Reimer and Franz Nielsen.

He'll seem like two of the seven best free agents. He's going to do that eight goals and seven assists and 55 games thing, and then someone will want him. And then get traded. They'll get traded again. And they'll score 12 and 19. Yeah. He's Montreal? Yeah, that's where it seems like.

He will go there and he will talk French for the media. David Perron. David Peron. He's got a good accent anyway when he talks in English. He's a good kid. He could the scorer. They could use him in the top six, I think. Keeping with my list of the most obscure,

UFAs out there on the market. Louis Erickson at number three on my list. Who's he? What's he do? So I feel like the Manifest Destiny is Louis Erickson with the St. Louis Blues in some way, shape, or form. And I think he'd actually be a really good fit there. Listen, I've long, like Louis Erickson, I've long made fun of the fact that he's the most overrated, underrated player in the league. He's so underrated that he became overrated and they became almost underrated again

because people thought he was overrated. it's a big circle of time. It is. Time is a flat circle. So I'm interested to see where Louis Erickson goes. I think he's a perfect great. He's kind of like Ocposo in the sense that I think he's a perfect co-star, a perfect complementary player to other really good players on a line.

And I'm dying to see where he goes. I'm dying to see what he gets. Hope he goes to Florida. I think he'd be good in Florida. I think he'd fit in there. He needs to go someplace where there's not going to be expectations for what he's going to do. St. Louis would be one of those places because Paul Stasney, He'll catch all the heat still.

He went to Boston and he had to fill in for Sagan. He scored 30 goals. Expectations are fine for him. Don't you dare say Swedes are soft mentally? That's what you're saying right now. You're saying they're weak-willed Swedes out there that can't handle the pressure in the spotlight. Well, you know, Thelma and Louise up there in Vancouver. Oh, come on, Milbury.

What are you doing? Get out of here. You're not supposed to be here. Yeah, you know, Thelan Louise up there holding hands going over the cliff with each other. Milbury, come on. You don't have time for this. Yeah, she, yeah. That's Cindy Crosby.

He's a soft play, see? Yeah, that's a ticket. That's what I'm saying, Joe Zey. Get out of here, Bill Barry. All right, my next guy. Here we go. Possibly the best defenseman on the market at this point. Okay, let's say it together.

Ready? One, two, three. John Michael Liles. Jason DeMeres. See? Not for nothing. John Michael Liles is probably number two. That's how bad it is right now.

Jason Tamer's is a good choice for you right there. And I mean, the last we heard was that Edmonton was going to be in the mix for him. Apparently, Edmonton's in the mix for literally every free agent. Literally everybody with a pulse that's not already on the roster. Do you think there's like a Canadian version

of Mike and the Mad Dog that sit around and talk like dog, Oilers, who's the top free agents that they're going to get? Coming up next time on Jacques in the Otter. Dog, this next break is brought to you by Boston Pizza. Enormously talented pizza makers over there. You can't be playing now, Yagabov, on the third line,

expected to put up first nine numbers, Mikey. Jockey? Dog, let me give you, let me give you Yakopov's numbers. Oh, come on, Jesus. Six goals. All right, Jason DeMeres. Fourteen goals.

Number two on my list is another up-and-comer, a real go-getter, if you will. Thomas Vanek. Now, Vanek, to me, is Peron to you. Like, I'm trying to figure out where his next chance comes from. I mean, hell, it could be, right? Like, I mean, he didn't earn his

keeping in Minnesota. He did okay in New York. Like, couldn't you see him back playing with Tavares? No. Why not? He did fine there. He's bad. I think he's, I think he's, I don't know what's going on. You think he's lost the thread as an NH, as a professional hockey player? I feel like his body is given out or something. I feel like his body's a wonderland, personally.

I want to take a little animal cracker and taking a little safari on his belly. Oh, that just took the wind out of me. So Vannick would be my number two. Who's your number two? Um, my number two, kind of a weird one, kind of a crazy one, a little bit off the beaten path. All right. Ready for it. Patrick. Weirdcock.

Weird Koch. Sorry, I just slips out every time I see his name. Well, I, well, now I understand from an analytics perspective, people really like him. Yeah, he was kind of bad last year, but he's 25-ish, had to basically sit behind Eric Carlson on the power play. He doesn't get a lot of power play time. When he didn't play with Eric Carlson, he played with, named, he was. the anchor around his neck on the Ottawa Senators. And I just, I feel like that you get him for cheap.

You get him somewhere. You can play him in your top four. And I believe he won't be, like, he's not going to have 45 points, but I feel like he's going to be like a sneaky good upgrade for the right team, which is basically almost every team. Like Dallas could drop, Dallas, Dallas could use him. Yeah. Devils could use him.

Yeah. I like him a lot. I think he's going to be that sneaky good signing this. Like, he's not going to be like Anton Straulman. A lot. A lot. I don't know why Ottawa didn't qualify, but... Number one on my list of the UFAs that I give a shit about.

You sure sound like you do. Eric Saul. Oh. Aren't you... No, I mean, listen, I... Listen, not for the impact, not because, like, oh, we got the final piece of our championship puzzle with a guy who used to be good several years ago. Like, he died.

He died. He's dead. He's dead. Of where the fuck he goes. I don't care at all. He's not going back to Carolina. He's not going back to the Rangers. He wants to be a top.

six forward. He made roughly the gross national product of Zaire against the cap in his previous contract. So where does he go next? That's the thing is like he's, he's, I just watching him, it was like watching Brad Richards here like slowly disintegrate. Right. And like he just got here. He's one of those guys like

Brad Richards that like is no longer anywhere near the player that he was. He's trading on reputation. But Brad Richards kept on finding work. And I feel like Eric Stahl will too. Oh, he will. I'm fascinated to figure out where that's going to be. It's going to be someplace. It may end up being like an Arizona or a, or, not. not a Florida. Arizona, like a, um, uh, who would be another one that would be in that category.

It's the thing, too, is like so many teams are right up against the cap. Carolina. Yeah. Like, there's no, like, there's not a lot of, like, he's, he's so like a, like a third level guy you're going to go after in free agency. Vancouver would be like a place you'd expect him to be. Because they're going after every old ass UFA they can find right now. Who's their number two center?

I'm forgetting. They go find out right now. It's not Nick Benino. it's not Ryan Kessler it's not Henrik Sedeen is it Oh is it is it Bo Horat? It might be Boe

Let me see what the deal is here Depth chart Courtesy of our friends at Roto Wire Hmm Uh Oh Turns out on RotaWire

The center depth chart position Is subscribers only What bullshit is this Making us pay for goddamn information Hold on the Van Gannucks Have their own depth chart On their website Who knew that?

Yeah, everyone's following the Carolina. Marcus Grandland? Is Marcus Grandland? Their number two-sad? Yeah, I guess you can go to Vancouver. Yeah, it could be a possibility. Who's the number one on your list of UFA's, sir? On my list of 20 here, by the way, I don't have you, I don't even have Eric Stahl.

Like, he's literally, I have, I have. On your list of 20, you don't even have Eric Stahl? Nope. Oh, my God. Do you have Jared Stahl? Is he a free agent? I don't have no idea. Oh, Jared Stahl.

He said Jordan. Not Jared. I think he met the guy from Subway who did the thing with the people. With the foot lungs. I'm not going to lie to, I really didn't make the list out in any sort of real order, so I'm just going to pick a guy off of it. I'm going to say... You're number one.

Here we go. Drum roll please. David Backus. I would agree with that. Like, where's he going to go? So he has two choices, which is to sign for whatever the blues want I'm to sign for and stay there with his wife and his dogs. Or take his wife and his dogs and move to, like,

Washington. There's no place there for him. Why? They just traded for Eller. They have Joe Anson. They have Baxter. You stick Bacchus on the second line center. You move Kuznets off to the wing.

You rock and roll. No, there's no room for Bacchus in Washington. All right. I'm just saying he's the kind of last piece of the puzzle guy. A team like the Capitals might look for it. Like Justin Williams? That's right. Cusnezzoff, Baxter.

Oh, man. Berikovsky. He doesn't fit in that top six. Put him on the fourth line. He's like, go to Richards win. Seven million dollars a season on the fourth line. But I think Backus is a good choice. I agree with that.

I'm sort of interested to see if it's not St. Louis, where it'll end up being. Like, he's going to be the guy that's going to look the weirdest to me, I think, in a new uniform. Like, I'm so used to him being, like, St. Louis. Yeah. So he's so used to looking him being sad in that blues jersey every postseason. And, like, the new shaved head look thing, by the way. Do we ever talk about that on the show? He became, like, he, like, shaved his head and became, like, a diesel kind of.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, he basically went from, like, bond the good guy to, like, bond the villain in, like, one year. In one year, yeah. David, man. He was pretty fierce. You have hair, buddy. Don't waste it, man.

Take it from a guy, who knows. Oh, poor guy. All right, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the segment on the show in which we read your listener mail. You have many questions, and we provide as many answers as we can. Oh, yeah. By the way, stop asking what a sandwich is. Is this a sandwich? Is that a sandwich?

We're done with that. It's June 2016. Lozo wants to put the crying Jordan face on a hot dog and then say, that's the end of both memes. It's over. Throw both memes in the volcano. Like, it's, once the dictionary defined a hot dog as a sandwich, that was, that was the end of it. We, we don't, we don't, we don't, we, not, everything's a sandwich.

We decided everything. You name a thing, it's a sandwich. James T. Patterson asks, why isn't a successful penalty shot scored as a power play goal? That makes a lot of sense. Does it? Does it? Well, I mean, doesn't it like, you, you, it's, it would have been a power play anyway, right? You're getting it because you were fouled.

Like, it would make sense. They don't have anybody on the ice. It's one shooter against no D. It's one on one instead of six on five. I don't even count the goalie as one. Oh, oh, no, goleys aren't people, Greg? That's right. Goleys are not people.

They're little freaks and pads. They get to, you know, just play the whole game while everybody else has to go off on shifts. Poor Roe. They're all a bunch of weirdos. Rogi Vashon's not a person in the court. I just don't think he's a hall of favor. So you don't think a penalty shot should be scored as a power play goal. No what I think with, here's what we should do.

What? Oh, I just remember this. Here it is. In soccer. Oh, boy. Sorry, it's footy. It's not Sokha. In the States, they might call it soccer.

But if you score an own goal, that person who it bounced off of is listed as the score of the goal. It's like own goal. Like if you score it to your own net, it'll say Wichinsky, 45th minute. That's what they have to start doing in hockey is when pucks get kicked in, bounced in, go off of a skate, and it's not the person who touched it last. Like, seriously, how great would it be to know how many own goals were scored? Are you saying it should be another statistical category or we should do the thing that I think we should do, which is subtract a goal from their own goal total

when they score into their own net. What, like the team total? No, no, no, no. Their total. So in theory, like, Dan Gerardy could have negative two goals for the Rangers. Yeah, he sold me. That's it.

That's all. Perfect. Yeah, it would be just so much better to look at the score sheet and figure out who's actually putting the puck in the net and who's having it bounce off of, like, the other team's right defenseman's balls or whatever. Or other body.

E&D wants to know what current Hall of Famer would you take out of the Hall of Fame. We're not going to put Rogie Vichon in this category because he's not in the Hall of Fame yet. He hasn't been formally inducted. Rogi Vichon's my answer. I would say, you know, a lot of people are going to say Clark Gillies.

I am sort of a Clark Gillies apologist because I feel like he did the thing he did better than anybody else. And I feel like, if you look at the pro football Hall of Fame, you have punters and kickers and all sorts of people. And like, the punters never as good as Joe Montana, but he's got his own thing he does. And he gets into the Hall of Fame that way,

and I'm fine with that. He plays a certain position. He plays a certain role. I've long made the argument that, you know, you should be able to put a middle reliever in the baseball Hall of Fame if they're the best middle reliever of all time like Jesse Orozco was. Like, that would make perfect sense to me. Sure. So I would go with like a guy like Dick Duff who was who is literally like putting the bat boy from the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970s into the Hall of Fame. It was just like the other guy on that list of every other Hall of Fame player on those teams and then he gets in.

So I was not a fan of that one. Glenn Anderson. Oh, that's another. good choice too. I mean, he was just kind of, he was very good. He's, he's, he's, he's like, victim of, a, a, a, a benefit of circumstance. Exactly. Like, if there was a hall of very good, he'd be on the Mount Rushmore of it. Welles Oliver wants to know, it's your birthday. Someone gives you a calf skin wallet. How do you react? What? You know, like a calf hide wallet. Like the, a wallet made of the hide of a calf. Cav. Like, but like, okay, hold on. Time out. Yes. 20 second timeout.

Please. Yes. Most wallets are made from, like, animal. I'm assuming he means that texture where it actually feels, you know, those ones that look like cowhide and they actually feel like a cowhide? They actually feel like they were, like, it's just like it's cow in your hand? But, like, is he asking it because he wants our reaction to somebody murdering a calf in order for us to put our wallet and credit cards in? Or is he just like saying, how thankful would you be for this awesome gift? Like, what's he going for there? I don't know.

How would you respond to it? I think those are two distinct different responses. I just think I would say thank you for the gift. I'm glad you remember me on my birthday. Like, I don't know how I would, I mean, I, God, the questions are so weird. I would take that wallet and I'd look the person straight in the face and say, where's the rest of the burger? Oh. No, exactly.

No, I would, I think I would be, I think I would, hold on. Let me look through these questions. Lou Vendetti wants to know, how good is even after you're gone by Jewel? What's the most pretty, what's the most petty you've ever been doing X? What the fuck is the last one? Jesus. Like petty? that was like two different two different thoughts but i guess that's what even after you're gone

is sort of the the thing how is it's it jewel is a here's the thing about jewel i always i always enjoyed the backstory the the folk the the sultry folk songstress living in the trunk of her car or whatever it was and then she became a huge hit and was headlining lilythair and the whole thing but i happen to believe that her my favorite song of hers was a song called i believe foolish games and I want to say it was from one of the Batman movie soundtracks Foolish games oh dear

tear me tear me apart yeah that's my favorite Joel song I think although I think I like the other one better what not that one but the words one she said a blah blah blah blah

what the fuck is that that's the other song that's the first song what's the first song she had I can't believe I got to sit here in Google jewel songs Jewel's songs You were meant for me And I was meant for

Yeah that's that's Oh who will save your soul That's the way will save your soul That's a good karaoke jam Because you can get like real high And then like do it a real low part Wait Is you were meant for

Isn't you were meant for me Two different songs So even after you're gone I really thought that was the same song Oh wait oh even after you Even after you're gone I know you're me And soon you will see you were meant for me.

Yeah. It took me a second to get there. That song came out 21 years ago, man. You should never be petty to your exes. You should always be nice and kind. Exactly. Be kind to everybody. Be kind out there, ladies and gentlemen.

Be good to each other, as the great Jerry Springer used to say. What's the most petty you've been to an ex? Well, I didn't take care of the kid she had. That's actually what I did. Thank you. No, I was just trying to think of what the most petty thing possible would be to do. It's like that or like, oh, I unfriend it on Facebook. Whoa.

What's the most pity I've ever been doing next? I gave her a copy of my free-fallen single in high school. I sent her a video of me having sex with her sister. Like, what's he looking for here? I'm trying to imagine, like, what in his mind? And the transition from the... How do you send her to that video? Do you make it private on YouTube?

You put it on a flash drive? I just upload it to X Hamster and then just like... Oh, yeah. And just sent it to her work email. And the headline is, Dave Lozo has... I know. And then it's like, it backfires and it's like, oh my God, does he even know what he's doing today? I'm like, oh, how am I going to find that on this Dave Lozo tag?

There's at least 175 videos here on X Hamster. Well, these are all selfies. This is disgusting. Lazaro writes in, what's stopping the NHL from having chips in pucks for goal line detection? I'll tell you what's stopping them. First of all, the puck tracking technology that they've been testing costs an amazing amount of money. and so they're wary about it because not everybody's sold in technology. But as far as putting a chip in the puck, they've tried to do it for years, but the pucks

keep splitting. They can't figure a way to actually get a chip inside the puck. That's why this other technology, this infrared thing that they tried out, was so exciting because they finally figured a way to do it. So that's that's that's a real serious answer. I don't have a joke answer to that. I was going to say something about Doritos or something, but it's just not good stuff. Our final question on today's puck soup is from Jared Moore.

Jared wants to know, when you walk into an empty men's room, which urinal do you choose? Now, you're walking into the men's room. It's completely empty. I imagine there's three or four wall units, probably three or four stalls. There's a few sinks in case you're someone at a Calgary Flames Outdoor game. That's, by the way, a personal reference. There are people actually shitting in the sinks at the Calgary Flames Outdoors. Shitting?

I heard shitting. Come on. That's what I heard. I didn't witness it, but I heard secondhand that people were shitting in the sinks. Calgary Flames Outdoor game. When you walk in an empty men's room, which urinal do you choose? I will go first. I choose the stall.

I don't need any kind of urinal action. I pee in a toilet at home. I don't have a wall unit at home. I've never had a wall unit at home. I feel like if you had a choice between using a pay phone and using a phone at the desk of a hotel, of course you use a phone at a desk of a hotel, be like using your own phone instead of a pay phone. I want to use the same situation that I have my own home. I piss in a toilet, even if there's nobody.

in the men's room. So if you go to a restaurant and they're like, we like to bring you out of steak, you're like, no thanks. At home, I have Pop-Tarts for dinner. So you're saying that pissing in a urinal is the same as eating at a steak? It's not luxurious at all. It's fantastic. Pying in a urnals is the best. It's really not. There's no lifting and lowering of the seat. You don't got to touch. You have to touch the seat. If the seat's down? You do have to, I use my foot. Oh, so you put your foot on there for the next guy. I put my foot. I, even better.

I put it under it. I kick it up. Kick it up like a kickstand. You're like a pee ninja. But the thing is, too, that you have to deal with a lot of variables at the urinal. You have to deal with back splash, not only from yourself, but also when it flushes. Like, there's a lot of things that are going on. You know you're standing in piss at a urinal, like just straight away.

Oh, yeah, because people who pee in the toilet never missing yet on the floor. Come on. The urinal's great. The urinal, the urinal makes me feel like I'm out. You know? Just out and about. I'm just out somewhere. I'm at a bar.

I'm going to rest. restaurant. I'm at a ball game. I'm somewhere. It's like... Not like out there and love it every minute of it. Yeah, it's like when you're drinking beer at a bar, I always get draft because I don't have a beer tap in my home. I have bottles at my home, but I don't have a beer tap, so I always get draft. But like, I'm confused by the question, though, because, all right, let's say it's like a three urinal situation. Never, never pick the middle one.

Yeah, I think Jared's saying that that would be his question. Not where do you pee in the men's room, but if, which urinal do you choose? I guess it would be, would never take the middle one. Right, because like I used to work with a guy who was the most chronic middle urinal user I've ever encountered in an office situation ever. And was it Gary Bettman? No. He probably has his own executive washer. Yeah, he's, he's like, like when I go to the bathroom, like, if there's like someone who's using the middle urinal out of the three, I like to just slide up to the one on the right and put my hand in the back of his neck and be like, hey, what's up, buddy? And then when he acts all weird, I'd be like, well, why did you pick the middle urinal? I assume you wanted me to

touch your shoulder while you were peeing, because why else would you pick the middle urinal while no one else is in the bathroom. I like to take the far left so I can see exactly what's going on in the rest of the room in case someone tries to true lies me. Okay, like here. In the Yahoo bathroom, I just went before and... By the way, all the urinals are shaped like

giant purple exclamation points. It's really weird. It's really, really awesome. It's really odd. And like when you pee in them, um... If you hit the urinal cake, it goes, Yahoo! It's like, I'm sorry, sir. This is a hotmail. You're in the wrong one.

No, but like, I always use the closest one to the door that's not the child one because that would be weird oh by the way the child one just stupid like i understand trying to teach your your young your young boy uh how to be a man but like it doesn't help when everything is taken and the only one that is left is one that like is down by your ankles freaking society today countowing to children that want to pee in public how do you feel about a trough um i don't know i'm not really ashamed of anything so i'll i'll pee anywhere I'm not ashamed of anything either, but I'm a little turned off by it because one, it makes me feel like a farm animal. And then two, it also makes me think that wherever I am, everything else is going to be antiquated to.

Like, I feel like... Where have you used them? Mammoth Park Racetrack has a trough. I've used the Wrigley as a trough, right. And I think, again, going back to the Calgary Autor game, did they have a trough? I forget. I've definitely done it in two different places. They had a few giant sinks.

people were shitting in. I just walked in there and Brian Brick was taking a dump on the sink. Like, if you have a trough, chances are, whatever is coming out of the pipes that's providing water for your facility has probably got, like, copper and asbestos in it.

Right. It's going to be like an old, oh, maybe Fenway? Does Fenway have it? Because I'll never forget, because I was only at Wrigley one time when I'm going back in the July. The one time I was there,

it was in 2010, and I'm sure Cubs fans remember the game. It was whatever game there, it was like in June because it was during the cup final and there was a blackout. And so imagine,

in this old-timey, antiquated stadium that has a trough and there's like, everyone's like, well, they're delay in the game, let's all go take a piss. It was maybe the grossest urine situation I've ever been a part of it because, like, I was drinking beer.

I was like, I got to pee, and I went to go pee, and it was just like a wine, everyone's shoulder to shoulder, like balls to balls up against the frigging trough, and there's, like, kids in there, too. That's the thing, too. It's weird when there's, like, kids at the trough. Like, I feel like trough should be an adult-only situation.

Yeah, especially because they have to arc it. Yeah, you know? Like MJ in like 98 doing a fade away while like getting it all over my pants like come on That that Chicago situation sounded really uncomfortable until jame gum from sounds of the lambs walked in with his night vision goggles and then it got really uncomfortable wait who's that guy for are you all peeing in the trough? Wait guy at the end buffalo bill buffalo bill okay what was his name game gum was his alias that's when they chased him are you all peeing in a trough there's this big fat trough it puts the urine in the

trough or it gets the hose again does just whenever it's Why does this guy sound like Bain? James Gumb. Don't you hurt my dog. Bain. Don't you hurt my dog? Totally different. You just put your hands over your face.

Totally different. Yeah. It's a totally different impression. That's right. Let's see. George Lucas. I made a movie with Jar Jar Binks. Here's another impression.

I made a movie with Jar Jaxi. Tell those sons of bitches we know where to pee now. Get the word out. You know, your loggia and my pulmonary are the same, but also your pulmonary are the same. Here, do loggia. All right, ready, here we go, lozia. All right, the planes, the ships go down.

Everyone cheers. Yay. Everyone, get on the horn and tell them, tell the world we know what to take those sons of bitches down. Bill Pullman gets done with his psychic situation with the aliens. I saw it to their minds. They're going from planet to planet. There's a difference. Stealing resources.

You're right. Yours is more gravel. Yeah, like, you're just smoother. Pullman's is more like he's spitting out the gravel. Like he's like, phe. I was Daryl Zero in a movie once called The Zero. Zero Effect. It's a great movie, by the way.

You should go watch it. While you were sleeping, I fell in love with your girlfriend. Today, let's celebrate Valentine's Day. Go out there and tell those sons of bitches how to fall in love. We promised you a brief word on ID4, too, and I'll say this about ID4 resurgence. You'll hate it. If you're not of the mind that it is the most idiotic film you've ever seen, and here's the litmus

I'll give you the litmus test I'm gonna say I'm gonna say three things about the film and you tell me whether or not this makes you want to see it number one there is an African warlord with machetes on his back

and he gets onto a spaceship and goes to the moon with Jeff Goldblum does that make you smile that doesn't happen in the movie tell people what the movie was really about I wish I was kidding we're gonna get sued by the studio

number two does this line make you make you smile don't worry your fiancee's okay we just radioed him on the moon why is the moon so heavily involved because the moon is now a base we have a base on the moon

in case the aliens came back and guess what it didn't work so number three does this make you smile this is a slight spoiler warning but I promise you you're probably not seeing this anyway a bus

is driven by a character onto the what is it the Yucca Salt Flats the Salt Flats that we saw in the first movie where Will Smith was on the way to Area 51 A bus of children

is driven by a character onto the Salt Flats at the same time there is a nuclear fusion bomb being detonated to destroy aliens and the bus is

the bus is driven by one character that we know from the first movie towards another character that we know from the first movie and I don't think

you really have to think all that hard about two related characters from the first movie, one who might be driving a bus and one who might be at ground zero to fight the aliens. I don't know who would be. Is it Viveka A. Fox? Two characters that might be related. The fact that you call them a character. Yes.

Oh, my God. It might be related. I don't want to see this movie. I don't even want to see it when it's on HBO. By the way, I think I've now seen The Martian 11 times. The only part that I can pick at this point is, I don't want to see this point is I don't want to see this movie. I feel like duct tape wouldn't save his life the way it did in the movie. It probably wouldn't.

I feel like I've used duct tape for stuff, and it kind of fades after a while. Yeah, I don't know. But I don't know. I don't know. So go see Independence Day, the two, 842, ID42, when Jackie Robinson stops the aliens. I don't see. But please, sir, in the remaining moments of the podcast, take us home the only way you can, Dave Lozo. Okay, so the other movie we talked about last week where I was like the ending,

everyone thinks the good guys win but they don't is Ocean's 13. Really quickly. There's a three-minute window. It stopped. Are we still recording? No, go. I don't think the mic's on anymore. I can't hear myself anymore.

No, it's still going. All right, so I'll just keep talking then. There's a three-minute window where Danny Ocean and the boys, they get all the money from Willie Bank. All the Big Whales win chips. They win all this money playing roulette, blackjack, all this stuff. And then the earthquake hits.

And they all run outside with their chips. And Willie Banks like, oh, no, I lost all my money. And Danny Ocean's like, oh, that's half a billion running out the door. And then first of all, Al Pacino's comeback to that is, you think you hurt me? I got a two handicapped on a golf course. Like, what the fuck is that? What kind of a comeback is that? You just had $500 billion, that million dollars stolen from you.

But he didn't. They ran out the door with chips. They didn't run out the door with cash. Willie Bank, A, it's the first day his casino's been open. So he's got a whole entire month to make the money. back. B, people are going to come back in and gamble at some point with the chips. They're going to take them and put them on the table and lose. So, A, Danny Ocean didn't do anything.

And B, I mean, seriously, I'm a two-handicap on the golf course. Someone just stole half a billion dollars. Like, hey, I just had sex with your wife. Yeah? Yeah? Well, guess what? I can bowl a 280 whenever I want. How fucking kind of come back is that?

So anyway, that's it for me this week. And thanks for listening. Give the sign off. Oh, God, what is it again? Oh, yeah, folks. Be lit and stay loyal. AF. AF.